JOSH SMITH: "Unstable Ideas"
STANDARD (OSLO)
PRESS RELEASE
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JOSH SMITH
"UNSTABLE IDEAS"
17.01.-16.02.2008 / PREVIEW: 17.01.2008 / 19.00-21.00
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SOME POSSIBLE - BUT MOSTLY REFUTED - QUOTES AND OPENING SENTENCES FOR A PRESS RELEASE OF JOSH SMITH
1.) The unpersonal is personal (again).
2.) Karl Kraus: "The more closely you look at a word the more distantly it looks back."
3.) This exhibition will consist of twelve large and twenty small paintings made between 2007 and 2008.
4.) There are two artists named Josh Smith. This is the other one.
5.) In Josh Smith's paintings traditional categories of 'representation' and 'abstraction' lose their value, for - as described by the French art historian and writer Hubert Damisch - "the purpose of awakening in the spectator the uneasiness with which the perception of a painting should be accompanied".
6.) As if stuck on repeat, the 20 canvases occupying the first wall in this exhibition give the same message: "JOSH SMITH, UNSTABLE IDEAS, STANDARD OSLO 17.01.-16.02.2008"
7.) The personal is unpersonal (again).
8.) The exhibition "Unstable Ideas" sees Josh Smith continue his discussion of production, reproduction and non-production in regards to 'the readymade painting'.
9.) Frank Black: "Hang on to Your Ego"
10.) Wikipedia.org: "Disambiguate |ˌdisamˈbigyoōˌāt| verb [ trans. ]: remove uncertainty of meaning from (an ambiguous sentence, phrase, or other linguistic unit)."
11.) In Josh Smith's collage paintings - layered newspaper ads, concert posters and take-out menus, intertwined with printouts of the artist's works - there is a transformation as much as an appropriation of material, allowing these to become more sculptural and performative.
12.) Josh Smith's paintings are fairly easy to identify: they have his name painted all over them.
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This is Josh Smith's second solo exhibition at STANDARD (OSLO). Since graduating from the University of Tennessee in 1998, Smith's works have been subject to a number of gallery exhibitions in Paris, Oslo, London, Brussels, New York, Detroit and Chicago, as well as museum solo exhibitions such as "Dial J for Josh" at The Power House in Memphis. Other recent exhibitions include last year's Lyon Biennial, in addition to "USA Today" at the Saatchi Gallery / Royal Academy of Arts, London, "The New Yorker" at Kunsthalle Zürich, "Uncertain States of America" at the Astrup-Fearnley Museum, Oslo, and the Serpentine Gallery in London. This year Smith will also have a solo exhibition with the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna.
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Installation photography: Frode Fjerdingstad
