Exhibition - Josh Smith
Living with Depression
David Zwirner
Exhibition: 2 September - 7 October, 2023
Opening: Saturday, 2 September, 2023
Josh Smith, exhibition installation, 2022.
Courtesy to Xavier Hufkens Gallery and the artist.
David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of Josh Smith's new paintings at the gallery's premises in Paris. Marking Smith's first solo exhibition in the French capital since 2009, the showcase follows the artist's two previous solo exhibitions with David Zwirner: Ghosts (2020), held simultaneously at the gallery's premises in London and East 69th Street, New York; and Emo Jungle (2019), which spanned three New York City gallery spaces on 19th Street. Smith also curated High as Fuck, an external exhibition in conjunction with the gallery, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In the spring of 2023, Smith launched Studio News 2 on David Zwirner Online, featuring new hand-drawn forms that builds on the artist's signature paintings of sunsets and palm trees in shared tropical locations.
Living with depression reflects Smith's desire to push himself and his work into new areas. While the majority of the artist's previous exhibitions have focused on specific images - such as palm trees, turtles or his own name - the Paris showcase will be more dynamic in terms of abstract and figurative paintings. Realizing that successful paintings emerge from the structures and constraints imposed by the artist, Smith challenged himself to rely less on the color contrasts and high palettes he used in many of his previous works, choosing instead to explore shades of red, which unite the works in the exhibition.
Red has long been recognized as a complex yet captivating color for modern and contemporary artists. In discovering it in these new works, Smith nods to great modernist painters such as Josef Albers, Philip Guston, Barnett Newman, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko, all of whom created single canvases made mainly in red.
Aware of the color red's origins and historical significance, Smith tackles each of these new canvases in his own way - reacting to forms and surfaces in a way that each stroke and mark or range of color closely related to all other formal elements. Paintings depicting New York's built environment—reminiscent of the cityscape Smith debuted in Specter—take on new visual qualities and meanings when painted in bright, crimson tones. Although self-contained, these paintings certainly evoke associations with the real world. While the empty streets in the previous works were inspired by the artist's neighborhood and surroundings during the COVID-19 shutdown, the sky is tinged with red and the buildings in the works. This new product is like a timely reflection on climate change and natural disasters, like smoke from the recent Canadian wildfires that brought New York City to the world's worst air quality.
Smith is renowned for the diversity of his artistic practice and the wide variety of styles in which he works. Originally training to be an engraver, but primarily known for his paintings, Smith has also created sculptures, pottery, books, prints, and posters, as well as being a a talented draftsman. His art is deeply subjective and, by questioning contemporary tastes and norms, is often countercultural. Typically sequence-working and liberally borrowing the vocabulary of modern painting, his paintings are expressive, gestural and colourful. Smith is efficient, but also strategic and methodical. For all their apparent spontaneity, however, his paintings are ultimately the product of an intense psychological process, with some taking years to complete. Smith has stated that he "thinks in paint" and, to this end, his art can be seen as a vehicle for testing ideas and a form of questioning whether it is whether it's the creative process or not, about what it means to be an artist, or the vagaries of everyday life.
About:
Josh Smith (b. 1976, Okinawa, Japan) is an American artist who lives and works in New York. His recent solo exhibitions include: Josh Smith, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany (2016); Josh Smith, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma, Italy (2015); The American Dream, Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2011); among others. Smith’s work has also been included in important group exhibitions, such as Before Tomorrow – Astrup Fearnley Museet 30 Years, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2023); Forever Young – 10 Years Museum Brandhorst, Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2019–2020); Trouble in Paradise: Collection Rattan Chadha, Kunsthal Rotterdam (2019); among others. His works are held in major public and private collections: Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pinault Collection, Paris; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Brandhorst, Munich, among others.
Website: www.davidzwirner.com
David Zwirner
The David Zwirner Gallery is located in Paris
David Zwirner
108, rue Vieille du Temple
Paris, 75003
T: +33 (0)1 85 09 43 21
E: paris@davidzwirner.com
