Often small exhibitions and individual examples of Kiki Smith’s work fail to convey the overall picture of the artist’s intentions and practice. “Telling Tales,” guest-curated by Helaine Posner for the International Center of Photography (ICP), allowed viewers to put together the pieces of Smith’s wide-ranging production from the past few years. Photographs, drawings, sculptures, video and sound composed several related narrative environments. Smith drew on biblical stories and folktales for her sculptures and drawings through the ’90s. The main characters in this show were Eve and the serpent, a witch, Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf. A child-sized book with a visual essay by Smith called “Bedlam” and an essay by Posner accompanied the show.

Serpent (1999), two 7 1/2-foothigh, white, leaded-glass panels, each depicting an upright lizard with a woman’s face, introduced Smith’s interpretation of the Garden of Eden. In her essay, Posner sees Smith’s characters as undergoing an initiation to attain experience and knowledge: “It is the fear engendered by this quest and the painful vulnerability of childhood that Smith explores in her current body of work.” Loss of innocence is the theme that connects the exhibition’s elements. Titled Eve (2001), a small white resin figure of a young girl with upstretched arms and graphite scribbled on various body parts, stood on a pedestal; on the walls behind her, color and black-and-white C-prints were arranged in two rows (36 4-by-6-inch photos below, 22 larger examples above). The photos included Eve near a fruit-bearing bush in close-cropped tableaux.

In addition to human and animal figures, the installation featured plants and fruits depicted in two and three dimensions. Naturalistic sculptures of fecund blackberry vines randomly climbed the walls. The volume of a soundtrack of an apple being bitten and chewed increased slowly as one moved toward a grouping of apples on the floor, some made of red wax, some of black bronze. On the walls, the photo series “Witch Sleeping” (2000) showed the artist dressed in black Victorian garb and carrying a basket of red and black apples, walking in the woods or falling into piles of yellow leaves. In the series, Smith assumes the role of the crone, a counterpoint to the fresh-faced sculpture of Eve.

Many of Smith’s sculptures and drawings show the influence of northern European, particularly late Gothic, art. (Smith was actually born in Nuremberg, Germany, although she grew up in the U.S.) Over the last few years the characters and circumstances of “Little Red Riding Hood” have been a springboard for the artist. The cautionary tale, popularized in the 18th-century collection of the Brothers Grimm, warned adolescent girls about the dangers of distracting temptations and premarital sex.

The exhibition included several pieces on this theme. Daughter (1999), a 4-foot-high sculpture of a wolf-girl, is made of off-white paper; the girl wears a red cape. The imagined progeny of the wolf and Red Riding Hood, she sprouts hair around her face and has lifelike glass eyes. According to Posner, Smith’s source for the sculpture was a picture of a bearded girl from a French book on wolves. A dirge-like soundtrack (composed by Margaret De Wys) emanated from the figure when the viewer approached, further animating its startling presence. Nearby, a life-size bronze wolf with a small red glove hanging from its fangs stood before a wall of large C-prints. The photographs show sections of-Daughter, sometimes partly covered by a tarp, as if she were a secret being slowly unveiled.

For several years Smith has created in various mediums works that she calls “Gang of Girls and Pack of Wolves.” Here 12 hand-colored C-prints presented as many girls’ faces in red hoods; each has a northern European look, consistent with the folktale’s origins. In an alcove with dark gray walls, a projection of a wolf running through the night appeared via stop-action video composed of successive drawings. On a monitor, Smith’s drawings of Red Riding Hood flashed by in quick succession.

In ICP’s back gallery, two large paper-and-muslin figures hung from the ceiling, their limbs tied with fabric strips. Each called Puppet, the eerie figures recall creation stories from Frankenstein to Pinocchio. Unlike Daughter, fraught with the conflicts of a hybrid identity, these puppets appear to be neutral shells, which have not yet received the defining gestures of their creator. Along the walls were photographs of the same puppets lying in a studio. Sculptures of polymer resin earthworms swarmed along the edge of the wall and the floor. A reference to the apples in the front galleries, the worms recalled the artist’s earlier sculptures of glass sperm in the context of the almost fetal puppets.

In a concurrent show of photographs at Pace/MacGill, Smith grouped C-prints that pictured details of some of her other sculptures. A childlike, blood-red wax figure called Harpies (2000) was presented through close-ups of her narrow, taut face and large, angled eyes as well as her intricately formed labia between stiff legs. Another sequence called “Autumn” included a picture of Smith’s bronze sculpture Calling, shown outdoors, peering sweetly through tall grass.