Alan Smith's sculptures characterize two worlds, two parallel flows, which complement each other, 

announce and build a whole of a meaningful and above all natural artistic way. That bivalence is seen on the plan of form as well as the semantic plan of accomplished works. What is more, we could almost according to genre, divide it into two thematic blocks on a figurative plan: the first block make the sculptures of female body while the other block make the sculptures of animals. That thematic bivalence breaks itself clearly and very subtly on the semantic plan of accomplished works, and, as I believe, on the complete plan of observation of the creative works of the artist. The first semantic plan also belongs to the first thematic block, which as I already mentioned, draws its politely from the figures of female body. The female body is presented with the solemn intonation, which according to the principle of fugue draws in the observer in a completely surrealistic, subtle, almost magical layer. Namely, a woman is a big secret, no matter how much her body is attractive, erotic, presented with almost hyper-realistic manner. The secret of a woman is in her motion, in miraculous tenderness which brings a flow of emotions-but those subtle, mysterious emotions, whose real source we do not know but we feel them strongly in extremely mysterious way. It seems that the basic emotive driving force in this thematic block is: tenderness. But when we observe it profoundly we realize that it is the femininity in the original, almost primeval sense of the word, the femininity as an eternal enigma and inspiration for an artist.

The other semantic plan, which, as we already mentioned, belongs also to the second thematic block, draws its levels from the animal forms. If we observe sculptures which belong to this corpus better, we will realize that there is enormous, almost wild, life energy radiating from them, energy which captures us and gives us new impulses-namely, it moves us.

If the first corpus is dedicated to the female principle, as universal human value, then the second corpus is, no doubt, dedicated to universal male principle, no matter that it is figuratively covered with layers of symbols. In that way, we have a completely well balanced creative works, we have before us the works of the artist in whom the two worlds reconcile themselves in a way that is only typical of him. So, we talk about a completely authentic artist who puts his every work in a circle of his entire opus and in that way enriches it with additional emotions and additional levels of meaning.

© Nikola Kitanovic, 2002