By Josh Smith
Located in New York, NY
ink on New York Times Newsprint
Signature is part of the artwork itself
Unique
This ink collage was created in 2005 -- more than a decade before the artist would join the billionaire mega-gallery David Zwirner Gallery, which signed him in 2017
This show was held at the experimental post-modern Reena Spaulings Gallery - which at the time was located at 371 Grand Street on the Lower East Side (the gallery later moved to East Houston Street)
More about the hand designed promotional collage itself:
It is is a hand painted, unique collage used for promoting the exhibition at Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York entitled "Josh Smith: Make it Plain," held on March 13-April 11, 2005.
This work was done on a section of the February 13, 2005 New York Times newspaper devoted to coverage of the Oscars -- with one part featuring an advertisement for the 2005 Warner Brothers film "Constantine", a Horror/Fantasy film featuring Keanu Reeves, who plays a demon hunter, and Rachel Weisz, who plays a policewoman in a supernatural plot based upon Hellblazer comics. Interestingly, more than two decades on, there is a sequel in the works - and the tag lines to the trailer for the Constantine 2 movie are: “Hell’s Not Just a Place, it’s a war” and “The world you’re fighting for, it’s as broken as you are. But what you’re up against now, it’s different…”
The newsprint is deliberately imperfect, with natural undulations, tears to the corners, etc. - all a deliberate part of the artist's original aesthetic, and not later damage. If you want pristine, go elsewhere. This newspaper has been read, consumed, repurposed and recycled.
The work itself has been floated and framed in a museum quality wood frame under plexiglass.
Measurements:
Framed
30 inches (vertical) by 25 inches (horizontal) by 2 inches
Artwork:
27 inches (vertical) by 22 inches
More about Josh Smith's "Make it Plain" show:
Recently, Josh Smith himself reminisced about this very 2005 exhibition at Reena Spaulings on social media, writing: "Such good shows there. Those were the days.."
Josh Smith's 2005 exhibition "Make It Plain" at Reena Spaulings was an installation-based show that explored themes of artistic production, recycling, and the "material overload" of the painting process. The exhibition, which ran in April 2005, was characterized by an immersive, somewhat chaotic environment that combined painting with installation art.
Key elements and themes of the show included:
"Mirror" Paintings: The show featured large "mirror paintings," which were described as painted-over rejects or, in some contexts, canvases with abstract markings, featuring colorful traces on the edges suggesting frames around an opaque reflection.
"Palette" Paintings: Smith included smaller "palette paintings" that displayed the raw,, sticky, and mixed pigments remaining from other, unseen works, highlighting the labor of painting.
Installation Strategy: The gallery space was filled with fifty hand-stained wooden bar stools, creating a dense, "oceanic" environment that visitors had to navigate, which served both as a way to display art and to fill the small space.
Mass-Produced Imagery (Drawings): In addition to the paintings, the show featured 800 small, hand-drawn, "Expressionist" style depictions of faces on file cards that lined the walls, reflecting a theme of rapid, automatic production.
Theme of Re-production: According to the gallery press materials, the exhibition explored the idea that "one painting always hides another" by re-using materials and focusing on the detritus of the creative process.
The 2005 show was reviewed by the art critic Roberta Smith (no relation, apparently) of The New York Times as a "bristling Expressionist profusion" and part of a series of shows where Smith acted as both a "protean creator and Warholian machine" who likes to highlight the conventions of the gallery setting
More about the elusive and conceptual "Reena Spaulings" Fine Art:
Founded in 2004 by John Kelsey and Emily Sundblad, Reena Spaulings gallery was a central hub for the neighborhood's emerging art scene.
Reena Spaulings is a collective project in the medium of a novel, an artist persona, and an institutional art-gallery active from 2005 to the present in New York City. The Gallery's Co-founders and Co-Directors include Carissa Rodriguez, John Kelsey and Emily Sundblad. The Reena Spaulings novel and persona remains an anonymous collective organization. The Spaulings initiative speaks to ideas of collectivity, anonymity, and artistic categorization through literature and artistic production. Reena Spaulings is a branch of the Bernadette Corporation, also based in New York City. (The Bernadette Corporation is a New York–based collective founded in 1994, working across art, fashion, film, and publishing. Originally formed by Bernadette Van-Huy, Sonny Pak, and Thuy Pham, the group’s current configuration—Van-Huy, John Kelsey, Jim Fletcher, and Antek Walczak—reflects a practice defined by shifting authorship and long-term collaboration. Over the past three decades, its members have explored processes of production while subverting the logics of cultural consumption through a distinctly (and playfully facetious) anti-corporate spirit.)
More about Josh Smith
In announcing its representation of Josh Smith in 2017, here's what Zwirner Gallery said about him:
Smith is a New York-based painter who also works with collage, sculpture, printmaking, and books. He first became known in the early 2000s for a series of canvases depicting his own name, a motif that allowed him to experiment freely with abstraction and figuration and the expressive possibilities of painting. His work has since given way to monochromes, gestural abstractions, and varied imagery, including leaves, fish, skeletons, sunsets, and palm trees that the artist has explored in series. Smith’s work engages in a celebratory and prolific process of experimentation and refinement—upending the conventions of painting while simultaneously commanding a deep awareness of its history.
The artist has noted, "I make art for myself, to see what it will look like. I also effectively let viewers, myself included, take or leave what they want. The message is indefinable, but the gist of it is; we are alive, and here together….Here is a group of painted poems, if you like…take a look and absorb what you want from them."
As stated by David Zwirner, "I have been following Josh’s work for some time and look forward to presenting it at the gallery. A true ‘artist’s artist,’ his work across different media conveys a playful reverence for painting, dynamically asserting its continued relevance. It’s exciting to think about his work in dialogue with the other artists we represent."
American artist Josh Smith was born in 1976 in Okinawa, Japan. Smith’s father was in the U.S. Army, and his family moved frequently, eventually settling in East Tennessee, where the artist mostly grew up. His work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including at the Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany (2016); Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma, Rome (2015); the Zabludowicz Collection, London (2013); The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2011); Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva (2009); De Hallen Haarlem, Haarlem, The Netherlands (2009-2010); Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (mumok), Vienna (2008); and SculptureCenter, Long Island City, New York (2004).
Smith’s work has also been included in important group exhibitions such as Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age, which opened at the Museum Brandhorst, Munich, and subsequently traveled to the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (mumok), Vienna (2015-2016); The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014-2015); The Painting Factory...
Category
Early 2000s Contemporary Art by Medium: Ink
MaterialsSumi Ink, Newsprint
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