Luhring Augustine is exhibiting the new paintings and
ceramics of Josh Smith. His fourth exhibition with the gallery, the show will
be presented with two presentations, one on view at the gallery’s Chelsea
location and the other on view at their Bushwick location.
The work of Josh Smith is distinguished by his mastery of
multiple mediums (including painting, collage, sculpture, book and printmaking,
and ceramics), his tireless production, and his tendency to acknowledge trends
in painting and sculpture by expressly upending them. His most iconic works are
paintings that boldly feature his name as their subject; in recent years, the
name has given way to motifs such as leaves, fish, skeletons, insects, ghosts,
and sunsets. In selecting these rather arbitrary subjects and rendering them in
a manner that is by turns aggressive, playful, repetitive, and oblique, Smith
compels us to move beyond aesthetics towards a focus on process and looking.
Not only is Josh Smith’s practice central to his
generation's discourse on painting: His practice is also guided by certain
parameters such as the persistent evidence of his hand, the regular sizing and
serial nature of his work, and the use of diverse techniques, many of which are
borne out of his training in printmaking. Spurred by that training in
printmaking, he challenges the romantic mythology of the artist by creating
mixed-media compositions that combine the handmade with manufactured and found
objects to examine the value of originality versus facsimile. "Painting is
like talking for me," Smith says. "It is how I communicate."The
element of chance is also important, and Smith welcomes mistakes in his art of
both the digital and analog variety. He strives to experiment constantly, but
also to refine existing ideas, hence his prolific output is fundamental to his
process. It not only reflects his inclination to think through his art, but
also to challenge traditional notions of originality and authenticity. One of
the most groundbreaking artists working today, Smith continues to test the
rules of artistic convention and expand the language of contemporary art.
Furthermore, his paintings often communicate immediacy,
speaking directly to the viewer and forcing interaction while forgoing formal
representation and traditional technique in order to explore abstraction and
composition. Though he has built a "bad boy"
reputation among indie film and fashion types with his seemingly messy looking
paintings, collages, book projects, and sculpture, his work is also seen
as intensely emotional and sophisticated in the art world and has attracted
important collectors and museums. Ultimately, many of Smith’s chosen motifs
eschew formal representation toward an exploration of abstraction. Other works,
such as his palette paintings, are purely abstract and explore notions of
composition created by chance. In his mixed media collages on plywood, subway
maps, take-out menus, newspapers and street posters are combined with reproductions
of Smith’s existing works as well as silk-screened text and original painting.
Following in the tradition of the “Combines” of Robert Rauschenberg (1925 – 2008)
and the “Multiples” and “96 Picadillies” of Dieter Roth (1930 – 1998), Smith
intersperses the manufactured with the handmade and elevates found materials by
virtue of inclusion. He makes art so he can look at it.
Josh Smith (b. 1976) is from Knoxville, Tennessee and lives
and works between Pennsylvania and New York. He has had several solo
exhibitions in the United States and abroad, most notably The American Dream at
The Brant Foundation in Greenwich, CT in 2011, Josh Smith at the Centre d'Art
Contemporain Genève in 2009, Who Am I at De Hallen Haarlem in 2009, and Hidden
Darts at MUMOK in Vienna in 2008. He has also participated in important group
exhibitions such as The Painting Factory: Abstraction after Warhol at the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Le Printemps de Septembre in Toulouse,
ILLUMInations in the 2011 Venice Biennale, and The Generational: Younger Than
Jesus at the New Museum in New York. His works are in numerous public
collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, MUMOK, Vienna, the Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Through October 19, 2013, Chelsea (October 26, 2013,
Bushwick)
531 West 24th Street, NYC 10011
25 Knickerbocker Ave, Brooklyn 11237
No comments:
Post a Comment