Brand New Gallery presents Black Swan, Shinique Smith’s second solo exhibition at the gallery.

The show features an installation of new works exploring ideas of transformation and energy transference through painting, sculpture and mixed media installation.

In this exhibition, Smith uses her signature materials of fabric, calligraphy and collage, as well as her body as a brush to create a new site-specific wall painting of frenetic script and gestural body prints, which will be in conversation with paintings and hanging sculptures.

Black Swan is a metaphor for a rare event, like the sighting of a previously unknown, once assumed, mythical bird that when seen changes preconceived notions built on the belief of its non-existence.

Through this collection of works Smith continues her “quest for wonder, beauty and the expression of unseen forces” that may lie within the preconceived notions of everyday objects.

Shinique Smith’s work is inspired by the vast nature of “things” that we consume and discard, which resonate on a personal and social scale. The Graffiti of her youth, Japanese calligraphy, and Abstraction are influences from which she extracts “the graceful and spiritual qualities in written word and the everyday.”

Shinique Smith (b. 1971, Baltimore, MD) lives and works in Brooklyn and Ulster County, NY.

Smith earned her MFA (2003) from Maryland Institute College of Art, where she served on the Board of Trustees (2013-2016) and her MAT (2000) from The Museum School and Tufts University.

Recent solo exhibitions: Project Atrium: Shinique Smith: Quickening, Museum of Contemporary Art (Jacksonville, FL, 2016); Resonance, Aspen Art Museum at Elk Camp (Aspen, CO, 2015-2017); Shinique Smith: Wonder and Rainbows, The Frist Center for the Visual Arts (Nashville, TN, 2015-2016); Threaded, Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA; 2015) and Shinique Smith: Bright Matter, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA, 2014). In 2017 Shinique Smith’ works will be highlighted in the exhibition Magnetic Fields at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City, MI). Recent group exhibitions: Impermanencia, Bienal de Cuenca (Cuenca, EC, 2016-2017); Hybridizing Earth, Discussing Multitude, Busan Biennale 2016 (Busan, KR, 2016); Modern Heroics: 75 Years of African-American Expressionism, Newark Museum (Newark, NJ, 2016-2017); Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947-2016, Hauser, Wirth & Schimmel (Los Angeles, CA, 2016) and No Man’s Land, Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, Rubell Family Collection, National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, DC, 2016).

Smith’s works are in the collections of Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); Denver Art Museum (Colorado); The Rubell Family Collection (Miami); Studio Museum in Harlem (New York); Ackland Art Museum (Ackland); Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY); Museum of Contemporary Art (Jacksonville); Newark Museum (Newark); Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA) and The Margulies Collection (Miami, FL) among the others.

Smith is a 2016 recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman award.

Vanderbilt Press has recently released a new monographic book Shinique Smith. Wonder and Rainbows. edited by Kathryn E. Delmez, curator at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.