Entering the Milk Gallery exhibition Illumination: Who Are Poets by Steven Sebring, one is greeted by large canvases simply tilted against the walls, showcasing pixelated portraits of top artists, musicians, and, ultimately, poets. At close range, the images appear to be beautiful colors stacked upon one another. Further away, they transform into portraits of Philip Glass or Michael Stipe.

With black-and-white images taped on either side of the focal-point paintings, the viewer is able to compare the clarity of a monochrome image with the more vibrant pieces. Furthermore, smaller imagery is transposed next to the portraits to highlight some of the most meaningful tools belonging to the specific subject. For instance, multiple photos of Patti Smith’s mouth suggest that is was not only her most notorious instrument but also her most controversial artistic catalyst.

A commentary on the digital age and the diminishing breed known as the poet, Steven focuses on influential subjects who are both accessible and completely indecipherable. Patti, on-site for the opening, exemplified this fluidity and bestowed the event with a performance-art dynamic by delivering both a spoken-word piece and a song. Later, speaking to Steven, I was able to learn more about the inspiration for his first solo show and what’s next for this ever-evolving artist.

Liz Doupnik: How did you go about choosing your subjects?

Steven Sebring: I was hired by magazines to photograph [the subjects] before the year 2000. I was manipulating these images years ago and they just sat on hard drives and then I decided to pull them back out and to call the show Illumination: Who are Poets, because I believe they all are poets.

Liz: By naming all these artists and musicians as poets, are you trying to bring the spotlight back to the poet?

Steven: I’ve always thought they were poets and that poets are a dying breed. So many young people don’t even know who Neil Young is.

Liz: Expand on the statement that poets are distorted from close range and become clearer from afar.

Steven: It seemed like these people are totally untouchable and you have to recognize them from afar to understand them. There’s something about that that’s very poetic within itself. The whole story of the black and white, which is another way to look at artists, was more of a study.

Liz: How do you think technology is affecting young artists today?

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Steven: It’s just a different world today. Unfortunately, it can create a lot of bad stuff too. Things can get convoluted. Sometimes it’s about how you can fuck it up instead of using it normally. I think technology is good and it needs to be embraced. I think it must be so difficult to be a new photographer today because anyone can do it. I think it’s ultimately taking it, using it and making it yours.

Liz: What’s next?

Steven: Patti [Smith] and I are going to work on another show, using 360-degree photography. We’re using technology, but using it my way. I’m beginning to think about collaborating with other artists, maybe even an architect. This could also be more of a performance-art piece. It could be artists, it could be dancers…it could be anything.

With [Illusions], Patti and I were talking about how it could get much bigger, doing people like Lou Reed and Eminem. It’s a growing show. I don’t think it’s done. I’m sure when I go into the gallery, I’ll do something new to it and then I’ll walk away. I think that’s the way installations are; they are a process and about trying new things.

Illumination: Who Are Poets runs through April 17th at Milk Gallery: 450 West 15th Street, New York.

Patti Smith seems to be everywhere these days. She’s got a new book Just Kids, an upcoming tour, and just opened an exhibition of drawings, photographs and personal things: Patti Smith and Steven Sebring: Objects of Life.

There were some great faces in Chelsea’s Robert Smith Gallery during the opening night: Michael Stipe turned up to congratulate Patti, Ryan McGinley and Terry Richardson were there, even my beloved film archivist Jonas Mekas came out, and it was nice to notice the abundance of older art lovers, not only the typical gallery opening show-offs.

There was a reason why all these great people came. In the exhibition, the persona that is Patti Smith gets featured in four ways: you can find her drawings and writings; still-lifes of her iconic belongings done by Steven Sebring, a photographer, who spent a decade filming Patti and put it into a documentary Patti Smith: Dream of Life; another room is highlighting Patti Smith as a performer with grand images of stage acts and singing; and the middle of a gallery is dedicated to Robert Mapplethorpe, as seen through Patti Smith’s camera lens.

The exhibition is powerful and insightful. The pictures of Patti Smith’s belongings talk about the icon that she is: her beat boots, her guitar, a necklace, childhood dress, luggage covered in old concert stickers, a Polaroid camera, a tambourine made by Robert Mapplethorpe. The objects in towering pictures appear illuminated, translucent. Real objects lay right there on pedestals: there’s a knight’s helmet, few pictures, a typewriter, and a Jeanne d’Arc book, which seems so fitting here.

Steven Sebring documents Patti on stage as well: pictures of her performing are powerful, and the image of Patti’s face with a bandana covering her eyes is breathtaking. However, here she is as a public persona, a performer. Her drawings – raw, outlined scribblings with text, sticky tape, lines drawn on dark albumen silver prints, attached pictures, screen prints of buildings – feel like free hand sketches, private and instinctive. The drawings are recent works, some of them created in collaboration with Steven Sebring, meanwhile Patti’s pictures of Robert Mapplethorpe remember the late ’60s and ’70s and her relationship with him. This part of exhibition introduces Patti’s new book, Just Kids.

The exhibition sums up everything that makes Patti so iconic: it’s not only her music, but her free spirit, non-conformism, style, and her relationships.