Can your monkey do the dog is the title for this book conceived jointly by Josh Smith and Christopher Wool. Thanks to digital imaging, they created together a series of pieces; one of them proposed an image from his corpus, which the other one reworked, by adding or removing elements. A new "layer" was each time superimposed on the previous one, without any constraint or mutual censorship regulating the alternating interventions.
Josh Smith (*1978, lives and works in New York) has recently gained a wide acclaim
for paintings that seem to turn Abstract Expressionism into cartoon-like
forms of appropriation. He first became known for the works in which he
used his name as a motif on the canvas, an ironic act of self marketing.
His later "abstractions" and "palettes" further demonstrated his ability
to collage manual imput and mechanical reproduction, challenging the
notions of creation.
In a world of incessant
flows, products, and images, Smith succeeds in offering an alternative flow that serves to
break the repetition of the same. Authenticity is not to be sought in a triumphant
subjectivity whose return would be signaled through signature and expressiveness, but in
a frenzied search whereby subject and work are constantly co-produced and modified.
Since the early 80s Christopher Wool (born 1955 in Chicago, lives and works in New York City) has
been using his painting to explore and
expand the boundaries of a painting whose
heroic period is past. Like Robert Gober,
Cady Noland and
Richard
Prince—with
whom he has worked—Wool has helped
invent new forms for a supposedly wornout
discipline. Throwing in references to music, cinema and art, he has created
works testifying to the contemporary experience.
Beginning with decorative patterns
and letters that produced All-over paintings
in which expression was cut to a minimum,
he went on to use silkscreening for works
that became steadily denser and freer.
See also
Warhol Wool Guyton.
