Loosely scrawled autographs, newspaper collages, and simply drawn leaves and fish are the instantly recognisable hallmarks of artist Josh Smith's prolific and provocative practice. Through the repetitive reappearance of the same motifs over and over again, the subject matter of Smith's work loses its function as words, information, or symbols, and the artworks emerge as a wider interrogation of structures of meaning, communication, authorship and originality.
Characterised by a loose and apparently spontaneous style, Smith's imprecise renderings belie a strategic and methodical practice. Smith is fascinated with the idea of repetition and as such comes from a print-making background. Drawing reference to Andy Warhol's mass production, Hanne Darboven's obsessive archives, and Robert Rauschenberg's combines, Smith approaches replication, aggregation, and appropriation as an artistic sublime.
Josh Smith was born in Tennessee in 1976. He lives and works in New York.
