Alexis Smith 

A natural heiress to the spirit of Dada and Pop Art, Alexis Smith is known for her paintings that combine images, objects and text drawn from popular culture and inspired by the American dream. Her monumental wall painting Fool’s Gold (1982) shows a sun scorched desert landscape with cactuses and buzzards circling in the airs above. A gold prospector walks across this arid environment dragging a donkey on which a plaster cowgirl (attached onto the canvas) rides side-saddle. A trompe-l’œil painted wooden frame contains a text that comments on man’s madness in the face of with such sweltering heat. It sounds just like the title of a romance novel:Sometimes men went crazy from the heat. Is the artist alluding to the three-dimensional female figure that stands out against the canvas as if it were a mirage, or perhaps an erotic hallucination? Fool’s Goldhasn’t been shown since the artist’s 1991 exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.