You can’t help but feel there’s something cunning about the latest exhibitions from Josh Smith, currently being held simultaneously at Luhring Augustine’s galleries in Bushwick and Chelsea. While sharing few outward traits other than color, each respective display speaks to a number of Smith’s avowed artistic interests—the presence of the artist’s hand in his work, exploration through seriality, an insistence on degrading the “preciousness” of art—and all with generous and astute hints of irony. More than that however, these exhibitions make clear Smith’s adroit understanding of how he is perceived by the contemporary art community.
In an array that shows the childlike exuberance and spirit of exploration one’s come to expect from Smith’s work, his newest exhibition in Brooklyn houses 90 ceramic sculptures and a series of 19 surprisingly gratifying palm tree paintings.
The ceramics on display, shown in installations of nine to 31 sculptures, include rough, hand-hewn icons, most of which fall in line with Smith’s symbolic lexicon of ghosts, jack-o’-lanterns, leaves, and skeletons, as well as clay bottles and cans created by molds presumably taken from detergent containers, salad dressing bottles, large tins, or the like.
While some of these re-appropriated consumer forms show loose and impulsive brush strokes that dress them in Smith’s name, others are more thoroughly manipulated, such as two ceramic cans that are re-imagined as a tower from which a small figure tries to escape. Stripped of their functionality, these everyday objects see their raison d’être replaced by the artist’s play with color, form, and texture. Some pieces, made to resemble decayed bottles or cans-turned-rocket-ship, even go so far as to conjure political ideas in regard to waste and technology.