CURATORS: Tanya Barson and Alejandra Labastida

The exhibition takes its title from Smith’s work Farce and Artifice (2006), an installation that incorporates multiple paintings placed facing one another. This piece introduces themes and recurring interests in her practice, particularly the relationships between modernity and its reclassification. In her work, Smith sets up a continuous interplay between farce (in the sense of the absurd, mockery, or parody) and artifice (understood as artificiality and deception, and ultimately as the “artifice of reason”), applying these concepts to contemporary society and to what has been termed “baroque modernity.”

Melanie Smith: Farce and Artifice juxtaposes works from different periods that highlight the continuity of recurring motifs throughout her production. The exhibition is structured into seven thematic sections: Abstraction, Urban, Color, Body, Archaeology, Nature, and Scale.