Lexington-based artist Hannah Smith’s multimedia solo show at Louisville’s Houseguest Gallery takes out the trash and brings it inside the gallery. Seeing the house gallery’s reopening post in January as I scrolled through my feed was a candle in a dark abyss of “Bad News,” as echoed by the text in Smith’s wall-mounted sculpture, Search and Destroy or Sniffin’ Glue (2025). Entering the gallery, which is the front room of curator Megan Bickel’s home, viewers are greeted by illuminated 3D words that spell out “Bad News,” appearing from the left wall. Adjacent is a larger-than-life amorphous object titled Dompte-regard (2025) carefully wrapped in garbage bags. The bags prompt less concern with what’s inside, but rather invite curiosity around the hallmark vessel of disposability. This centerpiece is speared by objects like extra-large 3D-printed piercings extruding from the sculpture, recalling shelf items from a Spencers store inside a decaying suburban mall. One piercing juts out like a lever, igniting my urge to pull and reminding me how fragile this trash monster may be. I can’t remember the last time a show beckoned me so intensely to touch the work.
I eventually notice the sculpture subtly teetering back and forth. Speaking to the artist at the opening, I mention that the wavering reminds me of being on the top floor of a skyscraper, as some well-meaning person declares that the building is swaying. My response being that I would have preferred ignorance, as I become acutely aware of the instability. The sense of disorientation echoes throughout the exhibition. The propped up bag bears the twisting form of a tornado, fittingly, as it sits alongside overt iconography that recalls a plastic, disposable Middle America, one well-accustomed to the emergency wail of tornado sirens. The walls around the room hold Smith’s assemblages, each framed by plastic bag decals. Even here, the viewer is reminded of the pervasiveness of this body bag monster in the room.
The many seemingly disparate parts and multimodal construction of Smith’s forms toy with the language of middle-class America. Colored sand held in containers spelling out “Fool’s Gold” sprout via metal pipes from a LED-lit sign announcing It’s Worth Losing (2025). It reminds me of my own cheap childhood vacations to Florida beaches where I would collect the same containers of neon sand, only to be buried in plastic totes in my mother’s basement. I am urged to recall backlit signs along stretches of rural Kentucky roadway shouting “Hot Girls XXX” and “Guns for Sale!” A piecemeal of restless desires and desperations, Smith’s frankensteins are both lovingly whimsical and totally absurd. If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry (2025) comes to mind. The artist’s collages, introducing themselves as playful and familiar, slowly skip like a worn-out DVD. You can blow on the DVD’s back and wipe it off with your shirt, but perhaps there are too many scratches. Within those pauses, viewers are confronted with faint whispers of a grief-stricken reckoning with capitalist failure, one too sublime to fully comprehend.
Fool’s Gold is on view at Houseguest Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky through March 1, 2025.
