Emily Mae SmithTransit of Venus
Sep 17 – Oct 24, 2026 Chelsea
New paintings in which Smith’s broomstick, grapes and eyeballs mutate into part-human, part-animal, part-plant figures caught up in questions of labor and power.
Smith’s second solo show with the gallery follows her 2024 survey at the Magritte Museum in Brussels. Some of the new works borrow from Jean-François Millet’s scenes of peasant labor.
In The Locust II the broomstick rises from straw as a near-human figure holding a scythe; in Only Human a bunch of bright grapes, each with a single eye, look for one another’s gaze. The surfaces are built up in thin, transparent glazes.
Gallery Chelsea
