KEITH SMITH – SYNECDOCHE
2025-12-15The title, meaning “a part that stands for the whole,” encapsulates Smith’s enduring exploration of how fragments, images, gestures, or stitched patterns, can reveal the complexity of an entire life or idea. As Smith himself once declared, “pictures can, no, must give up their sovereignty for the sake of the total.”
The exhibition gathers over forty works from Smith’s formative years between the 1960s and 1980s, a period of fervent innovation in photography and bookmaking. Drawn from his personal archive, these collages, stitched portraits, fabric works, postcards, and artist books trace an artist who has continuously reinvented his medium to express themes of intimacy, identity, and transformation. His art refuses to remain confined by the traditional boundaries of photography, instead merging image, text, and tactile materials into deeply personal and conceptual forms.
Opposite – Multiple Exposure with Remark (a la Picasso Etching), 1966
Exhibition runs through to January 9th, 2026
Bruce Silverstein Gallery
529 West 20th Street
New York
NY 10011
