Unsolved Mystery
Massimo De Carlo presents Unsolved Mystery, a new solo exhibition by Josh Smith. Josh Smith comes back to Milan at Massimo De Carlo’s gallery for his third show with a series of new paintings and a body of ceramic sculptures: Josh Smith’s work is a reflection on the practice of painting, on the role of the artist and on the meaning of the artwork itself. It investigates both the concepts of authenticity and seriality with an obsessive repetition of themes, forms and colors.
The paintings in Unsolved Mystery, located in all the gallery's rooms, have a very common and yet very exotic element as a main subject: the palm tree. Through thick strokes of paint in bright colors, Josh Smith conceives bizarre landscapes, romantic sunsets and silent sunrises in which the representation of the chosen element becomes just an excuse. Josh Smith’s works are in fact abstract paintings where the natural elements are just familiar symbols of common icons, images that are visible and recognizable everywhere, on postcards, in central streets all over the world, in shops windows, even on ties. The palm tree is a sign, a pattern to be reproduced to infinity as a way to fasten the gesture of the artist to the canvas.
The second room of the gallery presents a series of shelves with a number of small pottery sculptures. Bizarre artifacts, these objects are ruins of domestic items: leaves, ghosts, aluminium cans, and plastic bottles are all reproduced in ceramic and represent Josh Smith’s hypertrophic domestic approach.
Using the most various objects, from painting to graphic, from collage to ceramic, from book to installation, Josh Smith investigates the originality and reproducibility of the artwork: his works construct an intimate and yet universal path and they are always in constant dialogue one with the other. Seriality and linearity of forms and dimensions, the nagging repetition of decorative models, the use of disparate techniques, always inside the edges of classical patterns, chance and mistakes are the guidelines of Josh Smith’s work and the themes that define his world.
Josh Smith's work's evolution brought him to include into his abstract canvases decorative motifs such as leaves, fishes, insects, skeletons, ghosts and sunsets. From the Name Paintings to the monochromes, Josh Smith pushes the public to overstep the aesthetic result of the artist product, and to focus their attention on the artist process.
Artist
约什·史密斯1976年生于日本冲绳,在美国田纳西州诺克斯维尔市长大,现工作居住在布鲁克林。
约什·史密斯精于多种媒介的创作,包括绘画、拼贴、雕塑、书籍、版画和陶瓷,并且常常倾向于颠覆绘画与雕塑。然而,史密斯主要因绘画而闻名。
最具代表性的系列作品是以其名字为主题的手势画,其中,字母在符号与抽象形式之间变换不定。近年来,艺术家将作品中名字转变为更具象的题材,例如叶子、鱼、骨骼、昆虫、鬼怪,和日落。
史密斯选择这些相对随意的主题,并以一种带有侵略性的、有趣且重复的方式呈现。他用阴郁色彩和宽泛笔触,带领我们超越美学,专注于过程和成果,进而探究抽象的潜力。
其作品被许多国际机构收藏,包括:THE BROAD,洛杉矶,美国;卡内基艺术博物馆,匹兹堡,美国;蓬皮杜艺术中心,巴黎,法国;MODERNA MUSEET,斯特哥尔摩,瑞典;蒙特利尔当代艺术博物馆,蒙特利尔,加拿大;纽约现代艺术博物馆,纽约,美国;现代艺术博物馆维也纳路德维希基金會 MUMOK,维也纳,奥地利;惠特尼美国艺术博物馆,纽约,美国。