Chelsea Art Galleries: Josh Smith

The New Yorker

2013

Monochromes? Monochromes! Continuing to exhaust any pictorial mode that piques him, and to make a quality out of quantity, the breezily matter-of-fact Smith has dashed off a show of eighteen one-color smooth or brushy paintings on panel, each five feet high by four feet wide. The hues are primary, secondary, and mixed (bluish green, lemon yellow, “Pepto pink”). Viewed in sequences, the works suggest a poor man’s Ellsworth Kellys. They are passably lovely and infectiously dishonorable.