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Josh Smith

Josh Smith is an artist whose practice is central to his generation's discourse on painting. Driven by 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.


Click here to read about Josh Smith's exhibitions of monochromes and palm tree paintings at Luhring Augustine.

Born 1976
Hometown Knoxville, TN
Lives and Works New York, NY
Education
BA, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 1998
Permanent Collection

Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo, Norway
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Milwaukee Museum of Art, Milwaukee, WI
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
MUMOK, Vienna, Austria

Representing Galleries

Luhring Augustine, New York, NY

SHOWS

Marlborough Chelsea

New York
Sep 08 2016 - Oct 15 2016

SMS SOS: Text, Texture, Gesture

Petzel Gallery


Jun 24 2016 - Aug 05 2016

FINE YOUNG CANNIBALS

Massimo De Carlo

London
Jun 10 2016 - Jul 29 2016

SELF

Max Hetzler

Paris
Jun 04 2016 - Jul 16 2016

la mia ceramica

Xavier Hufkens

Brussels
Apr 21 2016 - May 28 2016

Josh Smith
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