MICHAEL SMITH + JOSHUA WHITE :: Artists’ Talk and Screening :: Tuesday, June 17, 2008, 6:30 pm :: Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) :: 535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10011 :: Admission free

EAI presents a special evening with Michael Smith and Joshua White. Smith and White will screen works that they have produced together and speak about their long collaboration.

Over the last 11 years, Michael Smith and  Joshua White have collaborated on numerous videos and installations that incorporate Smith’s deadpan and wide-eyed alter-ego, “Mike.” Gullible and ever-hopeful, Smith’s eponymous character is an Everyman living in a media-saturated world that he does not really understand.

The retrospective Mike’s World: Michael Smith & Joshua White (and other collaborators) opened at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas in 2007, and is currently on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia until August 3, 2008.

Mike has been central to Smith’s unique art practice since the 1970’s. Brought to life in a series of tragicomic videos and performances, Mike is a sweet but bland character who moves through sitcom-influenced sets and situations, while avoiding the traditional narrative arc. Mike goes nowhere. He embodies the mediocrity and stasis of a mass-produced American life.

Smith and White’s collaborative works incorporate White’s experience directing commercial television (including episodes of Seinfeld and The Max Headroom Show). White occupies a unique place in pop culture, being one of the main artists behind the influential and groundbreaking psychedelic light shows of the 1960’s. As the creator of the legendary Joshua Light Show, he designed shows for Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, among others.

Since their collaboration began in 1997, Smith and White have worked together on a series of increasingly elaborate and sophisticated installations and videos. They have created scenarios featuring Mike as an artist, struggling businessman, or entrepreneur. Often the videos are incorporated into the installations and function as artifacts from Mike’s world, or as videos produced by Mike, which sometimes take the forms of infomercials. In their immersive installations, the viewer is transported into Mike’s hyper-ordinary world. 

BIOS:
Michael Smith received a B.A. from Colorado College in 1973, and studied in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. He has received numerous awards and grants, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. Smith’s video works, performances and installations have been exhibited internationally at a range of venues, including Christine Burgin Gallery, New York; Leo Castelli Gallery, New York; Caroline’s Comedy Club; Henson International Puppet Festival; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Hales Gallery, London; Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan and EDB Projects in Amsterdam. Smith is currently an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and lives in Austin, Texas and New York. 

Joshua White is an artist, director and producer based in New York City. He made his mark as the creator and director of the legendary Joshua Light Show at Bill Graham’s Fillmore East in the late 1960s. White went on to design psychedelic light shows for Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, and Yayoi Kusama, among others. Later, he directed episodes of television programs such as Seinfeld, The Max Headroom Show, and Inside the Actors’ Studio. White’s film, Liquid Loops was recently included in the exhibition Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era at Tate Liverpool and the Whitney Museum of American Art. White studied Theater at Carnegie Tech (Now Carnegie Mellon University) and Film at the University of Southern California