Alexis Smith
Margo Leavin Gallery
“Words to Live By,” the title of Alexis Smith’s recent exhibition, is an apt designation for the texts adorning the fourteen collages, all from 1999, in the show. In an eponymous work that appears to be an airbrushed painting of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, Smith has affixed a lavender sleeping mask and the dust jacket from Amy Vanderbilt’s Everyday Etiquette, all packaged in a gilded frame, behind glass painted with the words “Never fear being vulgar, just boring.” Words to Live By exemplified the sense of humor running through the show (Smith’s first solo gallery effort in five years),