Josh Smith: Emo Jungle

Josh Smith (b. 1976) is a New York–based painter who also works with collage, sculpture, printmaking, and artist books. He first became known in the early 2000s for a series of canvases depicting his own name, a motif that allowed him to experiment freely with abstraction and figuration and the expressive possibilities of painting. His work has since given way to monochromes, gestural abstractions, and varied imagery, including leaves, fish, skeletons, sunsets, and palm trees that the artist has explored in series. Smith’s work engages in a celebratory and prolific project of experimentation and refinement—upending the conventions of painting while simultaneously commanding a deep awareness of its history.A writer and curator based in New York, Bob Nickas has organized more than 120 exhibitions since 1984. His books include Painting Abstraction: New Elements in Abstract Painting(2009) and four collections of his writings and interviews: Live Free or Die (2000), Theft Is Vision (2007), The Dept. of Corrections (2016), and Komplaint Dept. (2018). Most recently, he has contributed essays to Vija Celmins (2018) and Brand New: Art & Commodity in the 1980s (2018). In 2013, Nickas organized Alan Uglow at David Zwirner, New York, for which he authored the exhibition’s catalogue, and contributed an essay to No Problem: Cologne/New York 1984–1989 (2015), published by David Zwirner Books.