About the Work
The graphics on this Untitled canvas by Josh Smith denote his 2008 Unstable Ideas exhibition at the Standard in Oslo, Norway. The juxtaposition of the exhibition title with the solidity of the blocky letters, along with the crude handprint and blatant imperfections, is typical of Smith’s poignant, incisive ability to develop complex interplays between graphic and visual elements.
Untitled is one of Smith’s announcement paintings, in which he writes his own name and the name and date of art venues where he has previously exhibited, using the text and his anti-art aesthetic to examine the commercialism of the art market and to challenge the rules of artistic convention. Composed using a traditional woodcut technique, yet marked by the artist's hand, the paintings explore, and poke fun at, the issues of authenticity and facsimile that so preoccupy the art world elite.
About the Artist
Josh Smith is an artist whose practice is central to this generation’s discourse on painting. Driven by his early training in printmaking, Smith 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.”
What his paintings often communicate is immediacy, speaking directly to the viewer and forcing interaction. His paintings forgo 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.
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