Flaunt Magazine, profile by Laila Reshad
September 11, 2025
Josh Smith is always at work. This is largely because Smith, who deals in abstract paintings, drawings, and prints, is concerned with using the painting process as a tertiary logic, an extension of his own understanding of the world. When Josh Smith’s capacity for reason stops? This is when his work ends. For now, Smith keeps working, in his studio and home in and across New York City. Smith’s forthcoming exhibition, Destiny, on view this fall at David Zwirner Gallery in Los Angeles, presents a sly characterization of that teleological end: in it, the Grim Reaper pedals his bike throughout New York City, giving shape to The End, putting it at odds with the laborious process of understanding The End. With Smith’s proximity to the paintings (and to the New York locale) I find it curious that Smith chooses to display Destiny in Los Angeles as opposed to the East Coast. He asserts: “There’s a major difference in the art between Los Angeles and New York.” Smith’s observation broaches territory more profound than a general survey of East vs. West Coast sentiment. He explains, “Everything in LA is so wide and horizontal. Everything in New York is so long and tall, so vertical. In New York you have to be able to transport your art easily, move it from place to place, fit it between narrow areas. There’s definitely something subconscious about it.” It is this very relationship to space that Smith elevates in Destiny—where the passing ephemera of daily life in New York and its ordinary monuments composite our experience of the city. As Angelenos move through the images, Smith reimagines the process of perception as a meditation: the viewer must remain very still if they are to understand the dynamics of suburban motion. Read more