panels by the conjoined yellow plastic cylinders of a domestic cleaning product; the cylinders are attached, tip to tip with a spiral of ribbed blue plastic tubing. Each of us, rising above the city, Shmigel intimates in her second, floor-based composition, City in Which I Love You; each of us, able to drift omnisciently through the city’s fluorescently colored avenues, scaffolded constructions, ornamented pinnacles. Liberated from the categorical imperatives of the cabinet’s drawers and compartments, or the adjacent stacked volumes of vitrines – The View in Fragments - the scattered evidence of Shmigel’s Shanghai punctuates the gallery floor, as if emerging from a low layer of cloud cover. The shifts in scale and vantage point between the installations groupings are abrupt, immediate and effective: from the focused, almost obsessive urban intimacies of each drawer or vitrine to the seemingly detached aerial perspective afforded by the adjacent dispersion of vertical structures and objects, from the physical and psychological containment and compression of experience to illuminated, self-directed trajectories of movement and expanded horizons. Between the three groupings of forms lies the essence of Shmigel’s achievement: her vision is at once dizzyingly monumental and urban, and at once tangibly intimate and domestic, simultaneously the lightheartedness of the contemporary Luftmensch and the passionate attachment to identifiable place sought by so many others. This achievement occupies the tragically bittersweet territories of artistic expression and human desire explored by so many, from the miniature urban landscapes found in the settings and backgrounds of Giotto’s paintings to Harold Lloyd’s cinematic search for love in the big city in Safety Last. But the accomplishment is only enhanced by such referential company. In her own language of observation, appropriation, hand-crafted artisanry, and subtle installation, Shmigel addresses the fundamental complexities of place and identity with sensitivity, intelligence, and wry humor. Phenomenal, indeed.
Row eight (from the top, of eight), drawer two (from the left, of eight): compartment one holds an intricately folded green and red patterned paper blossom. Compartment two holds an intricately folded purple and red patterned paper blossom. Compartment three holds a small rectangular tin display box; its glass top reveals four interior compartments containing dried herbs. Compartment four holds an intricately folded blue and red patterned paper blossom.
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