PRESS RELEASE

Jennie Smith continues to expand on her visual lexicon of lush and delicate worlds in her third exhibition at the Rena Bransten Gallery. In her new body of work, Smith explores the problematic relationship between humankind and nature. Utilizing the action of drawing as a process to stream the unconscious, Smith conjures narrative scenes about animals and humans who have lost habitat and home. The drawings depict empty garments of displaced people – homeless and landless for political or environmental reasons. Animals mend their own habitats or morph themselves into kites and find their future in the open expanse of the sky. Through her work, Smith hopes to create some type of accountability for our species while simultaneously, through the use of the collective human imagination, offering a glimpse into a better world. 

Smith was born in 1981 in San Francisco, California where she currently lives and works. She received her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. Her previous projects include the Bulletin Board at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2006); her work was also featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, New York. Smith's work is in the collections of The Drawing Center, New York and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.