Zak Smith "A Show About Nothing"
Fredericks & Freiser Gallery
This event has ended.
Fredericks & Freiser presents an exhibition of paintings and drawings by Zak Smith. Unfortunately, he has once again refused to make art about anything, which does make it rather difficult to write a traditional press release.
We keep asking "Hey Zak, is this 20-foot drawing you made intended to subtly undermine normative assumptions about the relationship of public to private spaces in our increasingly de-centered psychosocial environment?" and he keeps saying things like "No." Or we say, "Zak, are these paintings of porn actresses that you know meant to offer a critical counter-narrative to popular depictions of gender?" and he says, "Nope. Maybe you could fill out the press release by using one of those on-line postmodern text generators."
"We tried that, and got: 'Debord’s critique of the structural paradigm of discourse suggests that sexual identity has objective value. Several deconstructivisms concerning nihilism may be revealed.' But Zak, our attachment to outdated Judeo-Christian cultural assumptions demands that we can't allow ourselves to accept pleasure unless it has meaning. Plus, y'know, we need a paragraph where we quote you saying something smart."
"How about: 'Meaning is the most interesting thing about a bad painting and the least interesting thing about a good painting'? Can I go now? I have a lot of work to do."
We do find some consolation, however, in the fact that the pictures are excruciatingly beautiful.
Zak Smith was born in 1976 and lives and works in Los Angeles.
Media
Schedule
from October 07, 2010 to November 06, 2010
Opening Reception on 2010-10-07 from 18:00 to 20:00