Between a Name and a Signature: Q+A With Josh Smith

Artist Josh Smith, 34, is not someone worried about curbing his output. His all-American name is painted in wild permutations on hundreds of canvases, stools, books and gallery announcements all over his 38th Street studio, which doubles as the headquarters of his art publishing house.

But Smith's name has always been a departure from which to explore abstraction, and his third solo show at Luhring Augustine in New York demonstrates further deviation in color and composition. The new work includes painting of insects in primitive or hieroglyphic detail, and paintings on the stubborn ground of aluminum. He's also proposed a summit for the work he's done on his own name name: writing it on a stage, underlight, as a backdrop and a marq… Read More

New Primitive: In the Studio With Thomas Houseago

Thomas Houseago remembers a childhood visit to the Cerne Abbas Giant, the mysterious hillside carving of a naked man in the English countryside. Likewise, his goliath works look to primitive forms and origin myths and emphasizes their crudeness. The monstrous figures, rendered in plaster and bronze, riff on Classicism and the Modernist obsession with primitive forms. The endlessly referential forms have clearly struck a chord, seeing inclusion in the most recent Whitney Biennial and solo gallery shows with Michael Werner and L&M.
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