Josh Smith (b. 1976) is an Okinawa-born, New York-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses painting, collage, sculpture, printmaking, and artist’s books. He first gained recognition in the early 2000s for paintings featuring his own name, using this recurring motif to explore abstraction, figuration, and the expressive possibilities of painting. His practice has since expanded to include monochromes, gestural abstractions, and varied imagery such as leaves, fish, skeletons, sunsets, and palm trees, often developed through sustained series. Characterized by prolific experimentation and continual reinvention, Smith’s work challenges the conventions of painting while engaging deeply with its history.
Smith’s work has been exhibited extensively at museums and arts institutions internationally.
Smith has exhibited internationally at museums and arts institutions, including The Drawing Center, New York, which presented Life Drawing in 2024, and the New Museum, New York, where his work appeared in The Generational: Younger Than Jesus (2009); and has also been featured at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Brandhorst, Munich; and Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna.
His work is held in prominent public collections worldwide, including The Broad, Los Angeles; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.