Ideas and Thoughts

Helmut Smits is a constant observer. His work, which moves across widely varying media from installation to sculpture to photography to drawing, playfully employs visual puns and witty observations to ultimately make a poetic statement about the everyday. In this volume of the Dutch artist’s drawings, the follow-up to his first book 123 Ideas (2008), Smits shares with readers his notebook of sketches and scribbles in a remarkably unmediated way. Ideas and Thoughts offers a window into the creative process and proves that, sometimes, the simplest ideas are the most profound. This new publication comes on the heels of Smits’ first US solo exhibition at Beginnings Gallery, New York. The artist is the recipient of the Absolut Talent Award (2009) and the Longlist Prix de Rome (2009)