Erik Smith

Opening Weds March 11, 4-7pm! Three Underground Spaces - Third Intervention Ujazdowski Castle CCA Warsaw Erik Smith’s third and final intervention for Three Underground Spaces cannot be overlooked when approaching the castle. Just off to the right, extending from the main path and parking lot into the castle grounds, the site is cordoned off by a perimeter safety fence. What brings the investigative exhibition project to completion is a literal excavation. The area selected for the intervention is, according to what the artist learned, ostensibly the location where a second cistern remains embedded underground.  Logically speaking, the third intervention would seem to be the first one. It provides the conceptual grounding for the other two: it deals most explicitly with the underground and what the artist has discovered there; the method employed is digging, an approach that neither adds material nor takes it away; the work itself is nothing but a hole—an exposed fissure, cavity, void. The third intervention both reveals what lies buried in the ground and denies access to it—a gesture already present in the previous two. Taken together, the three interventions articulate a range of both tangible and speculative perspectives on the underground.  Finally, it is also here that the notion of found sound emerges in its most unadulterated form—the sound we encounter around us, as well as what we discover in it. Standing before the excavation site, gazing into the open pit and reflecting on its relationship to sound, we are left to consider whether any aspect of the surrounding soundscape, whether audible to human ears or not, has been added to or altered in any way. The third intervention was realized in collaboration with archeologist Janusz Jędrzejewski. #threeundergroundspaces #ccawarsaw #siteintervention #urbanarcheology #excavation @u_jazdowski

Broke ground on the third intervention today … opening March 11!!! #threeundergroundspaces #ccawarsaw #excavation #intervention #urbanarcheology @u_jazdowski

Happy to announce that I’ll be a resident this fall at Headlands Center for the Arts in California. Looking forward to spending some quality time back in the Bay Area after so many years away… #artistresidency #bayarea #interdisciplinary @headlandsarts

Opening Friday 23th January 6pm sober Artists** Antje Blumenstein Britta Bogers Ingo Gerken Sebastian Gräfe Andreas Koch Simone Lanzenstiel Alex Lebus Fritz Lehmann Julia Mueller Valerie Potvin Erik Smith Opening Friday, 23th January, 6pm Open 24th / 25th of January 2026, 2-5pm Address Straßburger Straße 53 10405 Berlin @glue_berlin @fritz__lehmann @antjeblumenstein @brittabogers @sebastian.counts @ingogerken #andreaskoch @simonelanzenstiel @alexlebus @fritz__lehmann @julia.mueller.julia.mueller @valeriepotvinsculpture #sculpture #installation #floorcast

Three Underground Spaces Castle basement intervention Open Thurs and Sat! December 6, 2025 - April 15, 2026 Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art ul. Jazdów 2, 00-467 Warsaw Erik Smith’s second intervention in Three Underground Spaces takes place inside the Castle in an unnoticed corridor on the basement level. Contained within the original seventeenth-century foundation walls, marked in places by rocky protrusions, this space has likely always occupied an “in-between” status as a passageway to other rooms. In an earlier version of CCA, it led to gallery spaces; today it is off-limits to audiences and used only by technical and cleaning staff. Of the three sites in the exhibition project, it alone lies truly underground—a quality that its hermetic character effectively obscures.    Here, Smith presents a diverse array of objects culled from the room’s history and use—remnants of displays from past exhibitions and cleaning devices—alongside various core samples that together trace the accumulated material layers of architectural and institutional life. These cylindrical forms have been drilled directly out of the oldest foundation walls of the Castle as well as from various pedestals packed with exhibition debris. The logic of core sampling also reverberates in the room’s two overlapping yet distinct soundscapes: the subtle glowing or flickering of light sources translated into sound whose audible holes, breaks and gaps are partially filled in by found ambient and technical noises. In doing so, a perceptual field is revealed that emerges directly from the space itself, echoing the ground/electromagnetism themes of the cistern installation while anticipating the archeological dimensions of the third intervention yet to come. #3undergroundspaces #castlebasement #intervention #coresamples #archeology #sound #ambient #institution #exhibitiondisplays #ccawarsaw #underground #michallibera @u_jazdowski

🔊06/12/2025 zapraszamy na dwa wydarzenia dźwiękowe w ramach programu muzycznego Zamku.   🧱 Erik Smith, Druga interwencja „Trzy przestrzenie pod ziemią”  Druga interwencja Erika Smitha odbywa się w ukrytym korytarzu technicznym Zamku, wprost pod XVII-wiecznymi fundamentami. To przestrzeń dotąd niedostępna dla publiczności, w której artysta prezentuje pozostałości wcześniejszych wystaw i urządzenia czyszczące, które w zestawieniu z sąsiadującymi rdzeniami wiertniczymi pokazują warstwy historii budynku w formie materialnej. Dźwięk i światło wprowadzają w niej zmienny pejzaż percepcyjny, przenosząc odbiorcę poza codzienną przestrzeń korytarza i zapowiadając kolejne etapy projektu Smitha Zamku.   🕐 Otwarcie: 06/12/2025, 16:00–19:00 📍 Korytarz techniczny, CSW Zamek Ujazdowski 🎟️ Wstęp wolny   🫧 Francesco Cavaliere — Body0 XILEMA „Abyssal Creatures” Instalacja Cavaliere’a materializuje świat jego opowieści: hybrydowe stworzenia inspirowane głębinową florą i ludzką nieświadomością wdychają dźwięk i wydychają rezonanse. Współpraca z mistrzami szkła z Murano pozwoliła stworzyć rzeźby dźwiękowe, w których fale sinusoidalne przemieszczają się po wnękach szklanych form, generując złożony pejzaż dźwiękowy. Połączenie pierworodnej rzeźby Body0 z elementami XILEMA daje życie nowemu, przezroczystemu, chimerycznemu zespołowi, który Cavalier instaluje i wykonuje na żywo przy użyciu głosu, szkła, mikrofonów i laptopa.   🕐 06/12/2025, 19:00 📍 Sala im. Wojciecha Krukowskiego, CSW Zamek Ujazdowski 🎟️ Wstęp 30 zł @xing.it #MiC #CreativitaContemporanea #ItalianCouncil #ContemporaryItalianArt @creativita_contemporanea   📷 Druga interwencja „Trzy przestrzenie pod ziemią” (2025) fot. Erik Smith Druga interwencja „Trzy przestrzenie pod ziemią” (2025) fot. Erik Smith Druga interwencja „Trzy przestrzenie pod ziemią” (2025) fot. Erik Smith Francesco Cavaliere „Urban Glass NYC (2024)” fot. Nile Koetting Francesco Cavaliere „Abyssal Creatures - Body0 Xilema” dzięki uprzejmości ISSUE Project Room fot. Cameron Kelly McLeod Francesco Cavaliere „XILEMA di sabbie linfatiche inseminano creature vitree eidetiche”, Xing Palazzo Esposizionin, fot M3Studio-35

Upcoming…site of second intervention, Ujazdowski Castle basement, opening Dec 6! Floorplans and historical photos of castle foundations ca. 1950s, prior to reconstruction of the castle in the 1970s #3undergroundspaces #basement #castle #intervention #sound #ambient #ccawarsaw #underground #michallibera @u_jazdowski

#circuits #electro

Cistern intervention, part 2… Three Underground Spaces Open Thurs and Sat, and by appointment! October 19, 2025 - April 15, 2026 Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art ul. Jazdów 2, 00-467 Warsaw @u_jazdowski First image credit: Dominika Jaruga #3undergroundspaces #cistern #intervention #sound #electromagnetism #ambient #kawamata #holes #ccawarsaw #underground #michallibera #groundrecordings #reconstruction #deconstruction

Some shots from my show 3 Underground Spaces, cistern intervention, part 1 If in Warsaw the work can be visited Thurs and Sat, and by appointment! Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art ul. Jazdów 2, 00-467 Warsaw #3undergroundspaces #cistern #intervention #kawamata #holes #ccawarsaw #underground #michallibera #groundrecordings #reconstruction #deconstruction @u_jazdowski

Opening Sunday! Erik Smith Three Underground Spaces   Opening: Sunday, October 19, 2025, 4pm Exhibition: October 21, 2025–April 19, 2026   Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art  Jazdów 2, 00–467 Warsaw, Poland   Three Underground Spaces, Erik Smith’s site-investigative exhibition project for CCA, engages with the subterranean realm of Ujazdowski Castle and its surroundings. Three distinct interventions will emerge in successive stages, culminating in an interrelated constellation of works that surface the material and latent strata of this terrain.   Smith’s practice is grounded in what he calls “performing the site,” actions that extract the underlying features and meanings of spaces but also point to what remains concealed and resists articulation. His excavations and displacements cut through the geological, architectural, institutional, temporal, and sonic dimensions of place. The Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle – once a palace for nobles, then a hospital, and today an art institution – offers a dense layering of sites for such dissections: from long-buried in the ground, to more recently unearthed and repurposed, to fully functional and contained within foundation walls.   The first intervention centers on the cistern embedded within the Castle grounds. A nineteenth-century relic of the former water infrastructure, the space was repurposed for institutional use by Tadashi Kawamata in his 2003 work Reconstruction and has since served as a venue for art events. Smith’s partial deinstallation of the floor draws attention to the space’s materiality and the tension between accessibility and inaccessibility, a recurring theme in his practice. This tension also resonates in the integrated sound installation, where recordings of the site and Smith’s “ground recordings” of electromagnetic activity – made audible via electrodes inserted into the soil – double and dismantle the cistern’s ambient soundscape. Link in bio   #threeundergroundspaces #ccawarsaw #ujazdowski #cistern #castle #intervention #sound #groundrecordings #underground #kawamata #reconstruction #deconstruction #excavation

💥🔨 Zanurzcie się w dźwiękach ziemi pod CSW Zamek Ujazdowski. Zapraszamy na otwarcie pierwszej z trzech instalacji projektu wystawienniczego „Trzy przestrzenie pod ziemią” Erika Smitha.   📍 Cysterna, CSW Zamek Ujazdowski 🗓 19/10, 16:00 otwarcie instalacji, 19:00 koncert Susany Santos Silvy 🎟 Wstęp wolny   ⛓️Pierwsza interwencja Erika Smitha odbywa się w Cysternie Zamku Ujazdowskiego – artysta demontuje fragment podłogi, tworząc instalację dźwiękową z nagrań ziemi i jej elektromagnetycznych wibracji. Smith „performuje miejsca” – odkrywa ich ukryte warstwy i znaczenia, dosłownie kopiąc w historii, architekturze i dźwięku. Projekt ujawnia niewidoczne poziomy Zamku – od reliktów pod ziemią po współczesne przestrzenie sztuki – i podkreśla napięcie między tym, co dostępne, a tym, co ukryte.   ⛓️Susana Santos Silva zaprezentuje w Cysternie osobistą wariację na temat związków trąbki z ziemią. Jej instrument – od wieków obecny w rytuałach, obrzędach i uroczystościach – staje się tu medium łączącym dźwięk z materią, ludzi z glebą, muzykę z tym, co pod powierzchnią.   Do zobaczenia! Kurator programu muzycznego: Michał Libera   📸 Erik Smith, Three Underground Spaces Erik Smith, Test Dig Susana Santos Silva autorstwa Aloísio Brito