Josh Smith: Living with Depression

David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Josh Smith at the gallery’s Paris location. Marking Smith’s first solo exhibition in the French capital since 2009, the presentation follows on the artist’s two previous solo shows with David Zwirner: Spectre (2020), held concurrently at the gallery’s locations in London and East 69th Street, New York; and Emo Jungle (2019), which spanned all three of the gallery’s 19th Street spaces in New York. Smith also staged High as Fuck, an offsite exhibition in collaboration with the gallery, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In Spring 2023, Smith launched Studio News 2 on David Zwirner Online, featuring new hand-painted monotypes that build upon the artist’s signature paintings of sunsets and palm trees in generic tropical locales.

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David Zwirner a le plaisir de présenter un ensemble de peintures récentes de Josh Smith dans les espaces parisiens de la galerie. Ce sera la première exposition personnelle de l’artiste depuis 2009 dans la capitale française, et la troisième en collaboration avec David Zwirner après Spectre (2020), qui se tenait en simultané à Londres et à New York dans l’espace East 69th Street, et Emo Jungle (2019), qui occupait les trois lieux d’exposition de la 19th Street à New York. Une autre collaboration avec la galerie, intitulée High as Fuck (2020), a eu lieu hors-les-murs, au plus fort de la pandémie liée au Covid-19. Au printemps 2023, Josh Smith a aussi dévoilé Studio News 2 sur la plate-forme David Zwirner Online, une série de monotypes peints à la main, qui prolonge ses célèbres travaux antérieurs, où il représentait, dans des décors tropicaux stéréotypés, des palmiers et autres couchers de soleil.

Image: Installation view, Josh Smith: Living with Depression, David Zwirner, Paris, 2023

Location

108, rue Vieille du Temple Paris France, 75003

Dates

September 2—October 7, 2023

Opening Reception

Saturday, September 2, 6–8 PM

Gallery Hours

Tues—Sat 11am–7pm

Artist

Josh Smith

Press Release

Josh Smith: Living with Depression

Josh Smith, 2021. Photo by Jason Schmidt

“I have a lot of little different hobbies and I put all of that into what I do.… In some ways I became like a printer of all this stuff inside of me.”

—Josh Smith, Studio News, June 2023

Josh Smith

Yes, 2023

Oil and acrylic on poly cotton

72 x 60 inches (182.9 x 152.4 cm)

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Living with Depression reflects Smith’s desire to push himself and his work into new territories. While the majority of the artist’s past exhibitions have focused on specific visuals—such as grim reapers, palm trees, turtles, or his own name—the presentation in Paris is more pictorially dynamic and less serialized, including both abstract and representational paintings as well as hybrid works that mix these visual modes.

Josh Smith, Yes, 2023 (detail)

Josh Smith

Stepladder, 2023

Oil and acrylic on poly cotton

84 x 72 inches (213.4 x 182.9 cm)

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“Similar to all the artists whom he references—Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Pablo Picasso, Keith Haring, and Christopher Wool—Smith does not use painting to illustrate a project. Instead, he thinks ‘in paint.’ This thinking-in-motion shows in the quantity of works that he produces, a phenomenon that he deliberately stages in his installations.”

—Anne Pontégnie, curator-at-large, Le Consortium, Dijon

Installation view, Josh Smith: Living with Depression, David Zwirner, Paris, 2023

Josh Smith

Untitled, 2023

Oil on linen

60 x 60 inches (152.4 x 152.4 cm)

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Josh Smith

Living with Depression, 2023

Oil on linen

48 x 48 inches (121.9 x 121.9 cm)

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Recognizing that successful paintings emerge from the structures and restrictions imposed on or by the artist, Smith challenged himself by relying less on the color contrasts and the high-tone palettes he has used in many of his past works, instead choosing to explore the nuances of red, which unites the works in the exhibition.

Josh Smith, Living with Depression, 2023 (detail)

Josh Smith, Untitled, 2023 (detail)

“While still being seductive, these paintings switch pop prettiness for a more subversive delivery. You have to come in the back door as opposed to the front door with these.”

—Josh Smith, June 2023

Installation view, Josh Smith: Living with Depression, David Zwirner, Paris, 2023

Josh Smith

Galaxy, 2023

Oil and acrylic on poly cotton

48 x 36 inches (121.9 x 91.4 cm)

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Josh Smith, Galaxy, 2023 (detail)

Josh Smith in front of Philip Guston’s Painting, Smoking, Eating (1973), 2023. Courtesy the artist’s Instagram

Red has long been recognized as a complicated yet enticing color for modern and contemporary artists. In exploring it in these new works, Smith nods to great modern painters such as Josef Albers, Philip Guston, Barnett Newman, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, and Mark Rothko, all of whom created red monochromes or groups of paintings done predominantly in red.

Josh Smith

Lightning Storm, 2023

Oil and acrylic on poly cotton

84 x 72 inches (213.4 x 182.9 cm)

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Albers famously noted that he considered red to be the most difficult color to work with, a challenge that led Rauschenberg to create his seminal red paintings in the middle of the 1950s.

Josef Albers, Study for Homage to the Square: Wet and Dry, 1969. Courtesy Phillips

Robert Rauschenberg, Red Painting, 1954. Collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles

“If one says 'red'—the name of the color—and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.”

—Josef Albers, Interaction of Color, 1963

Installation view, Josh Smith: Living with Depression, David Zwirner, Paris, 2023

Video by Josh Smith. Courtesy the artist’s YouTube channel

Aware of the color red’s lineage and historical significance, Smith resolves each of these new canvases on its own terms—responding to the forms and surfaces in such a way that every brushstroke and mark or swath of color is intricately connected with every other formal element. Paintings depicting New York’s built environment—which recall the cityscapes Smith debuted in Spectre—take on new visual qualities and connotations when cast in scarlet, crimson, cherry, or mahogany tones.

Josh Smith

Queensboro Bridge, 2023

Oil and acrylic on poly cotton

72 x 84 inches (182.9 x 213.4 cm)

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“Mr. Smith tends to work fast and a trifle sloppily, until a certain image becomes second nature, a template. This automatism opens the door to incessant variations in brushwork, background and, above all, color—as well as our consideration of the same.”

—Roberta Smith, chief critic, The New York Times

Josh Smith

Josh Smith, 2023

Oil and acrylic on poly cotton

72 x 60 inches (182.9 x 152.4 cm)

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Josh Smith

Answer For Everything, 2023

Oil and acrylic on poly cotton

84 x 72 inches (213.4 x 182.9 cm)

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Smith’s focus on palette in these new works also heightens the tension between figure and ground. Though he applies his paint evenly across the surface of his paintings, in some works, animals or abstract forms stand out against their backdrop, while in others, their coloration and contours melt or phase into the background.

Josh Smith

Red Bug, 2023

Oil and acrylic on poly cotton

84 x 72 inches (213.4 x 182.9 cm)

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Figures, shapes, and forms may appear like innocuous carriers of color and line, yet their coloring can at times bring to mind bodily viscera. At the same time, the works remain resolutely painterly rather than abject—a clear reflection of Smith’s sensitivity to and facility with his medium.

Josh Smith, Red Bug, 2023 (detail)

Josh Smith, Answer For Everything, 2023 (detail)

Josh Smith

Pals, 2023

Oil and acrylic on poly cotton

72 x 60 inches (182.9 x 152.4 cm)

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“While his loosely painted allover compositions have a clear relationship to art-historical precedents, from German Expressionism to Abstract Expressionism, Smith is not attached to the theoretical or cultural contexts of any art-historical periods that his paintings might conjure. For him, all styles become individual elements in his personal painting vocabulary.”

—Margaret Ewing, art historian, curator, and writer

Video by Josh Smith. Courtesy the artist’s YouTube channel

Installation view, Josh Smith: Living with Depression, David Zwirner, Paris, 2023

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