Artists

Emily Mae Smith, René Magritte

Press release

After Jean-Michel Folon’s six-month exhibition, it is now Emily Mae Smith’s turn, a painter born in 1979 in the United States (Austin, Texas), to settle at the Magritte Museum and establish a personal dialogue with the universe of the Belgian icon. The artist, who lives and works in New York (USA), will present around thirty works.

A recurring character in Emily Mae Smith’s oeuvre is an anthropomorphic broomstick figure, inspired by the segment The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Disney’s Fantasia (1940), which was based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1797 poem. This figure becomes her avatar, simultaneously referring to the painter’s brush, the working tool of housemaids, the mythologized instrument of the witch but also the phallus, giving a sexual dimension to her paintings. Emily Mae Smith stages this brush-broom figure in various spaces: a 17th-century interior, a rocky exterior, a cave, etc. She accompanies it with props and objects borrowed from Symbolism (skull, flowers, still life...) and Surrealism. In her works, she readily places direct references to art history and Magritte’s work: like an apple, a burnt-out candle, rocks... Sometimes, even a Magritte painting appears within her works, creating a poetic mise en abyme. Beyond reference or allusion, the connection between Emily Mae Smith’s paintings and those of René Magritte also shows a keen sense of image construction and a taste for visual trickery.

Both artists have chosen to work with the figure of the “double-self,” the former with the man in a hat and the latter with broomstick, making each their self-portrait. Finally, their painting technique with well-defined contours, as well as the presence of text within the image or the “shown-hidden” aspect, give a strange dimension to their paintings, placing the viewer in a state of questioning, perplexity, but also contemplation. Smith also shares with Magritte a certain dark humor, as she enjoys playing with her « double-self ». By giving her character multiple forms, sometimes classic: posing as a creative genius, sometimes submissive: relegated to its condition as a household object, dreaming of faraway places... She then uses it to question the place of women in painting and in our society. One trick hides another. This exhibition is supported by Petzel, New York, and rodolphe janssen, Brussels, and the generous donors: Benjamin Khakshour, Justine Freeman and Robert Lowinger.