Josh Smith
Friend, 2023

Debuting at Frieze Sculpture in Regent's Park, Friend is the largest sculptural work to date by the New York–based artist Josh Smith (b. 1976). Cast in highly textured, patinated bronze and standing over two meters tall, the work depicts the figure of the Grim Reaper.

Smith first became known in the early 2000s for a series of canvases depicting his own name, a motif that allowed him to experiment with the expressive possibilities of painting. He has since turned to monochromes, gestural abstractions, and series centered on imagery including leaves, fish, skeletons, the Grim Reaper, sunsets, and palm trees. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at museums and arts institutions in the United States and abroad, and is held in numerous international public collections.

Josh Smith

Friend, 2023

Patinated bronze

86 1/4 x 85 x 34 inches (219.1 x 215.9 x 86.4 cm)

Photography by Josh Hems

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Friend signals a new development in Smith's long standing interest in sculpture and sculptural media. Here, the artist transposes the Grim Reaper into a towering figure whose empty face and shapeless cloak act as a formless cipher for the viewer.

Francisco de Goya, Fearful Folly, 1815–1819

Arnold Böcklin, The Plague, 1898

Master of the Chronique scandaleuse, Denise Poncher before a Vision of Death, 1500. The J. Paul Getty Museum

Personification of Death at the beginning of the Office of the Dead, from an Italian Book of Hours, c. 1470-1480

While the figure of death is present in variations across many mythologies and religions, the Grim Reaper as a distinct personification seems to have appeared in Europe during the fourteenth century, as the Black Death decimated the population. It was during this time that artists began to depict death as a skeletal figure, often with a scythe, although the term “Grim Reaper” likely arose in the nineteenth century.

Installation view, Josh Smith: Emo Jungle, David Zwirner, New York, 2019

Presented in Emo Jungle, the artist’s 2019 exhibition at David Zwirner, Smith’s Reaper paintings are rendered in lush ribbons and fields of color. As with his other motifs, the artist’s choice of subject matter removes the imperative to find meaning or interpret the artwork. “The meaning perhaps arises in the making,” he explains, “leaving the viewer something purely for their visual engagement.” As Bob Nickas writes, “The Reaper, as Smith reinterprets the figure...is not so grim.”

Josh Smith, Clear Message, 2019

“The Reaper is translated perfectly out of the paintings and into the sculptures. I found the materials and they naturally formed into the Reaper sculptures.”

—Josh Smith

Josh Smith, maquette for Friend, 2023

Friend was forged using advanced 3D scans of maquettes that Smith made from oyster shells, resin, and wire.

The strong texture of the sculpture and its use of organic materials recall nineteenth- and twentieth-century works, including Auguste Rodin’s Monument to Balzac (1892–1897)—once called “the greatest piece of sculpture of the nineteenth century”—and Eileen Agar’s surrealist assemblages composed from shells and other objects the artist gathered along the shoreline.

Auguste Rodin, Monument to Balzac, 1892–1897 (left); Eileen Agar, Wings of Augury, 1936. Centre Pompidou, Paris (right)

“The Reaper started out as a small sculpture twelve inches tall.… With sculpture you have to give up a little control and turn it over to the process and the environment in which the sculpture is sitting. In London the sculpture is in a beautiful park and hopefully the environment moves around it and fills it up in a different way.”

—Josh Smith

Josh Smith, Friend, 2023 (detail)

The heavily worked surface of the bronze highlights the process of the work’s creation, transforming it into a meditation on the medium itself. A reddish-brown patina on the sculpture corresponds to the palette of the paintings in Living with Depression, Smith’s current solo exhibition at David Zwirner Paris. These paintings explore the nuances of red, switching, in the artist’s words, “pop prettiness for a more subversive delivery.”

Installation view, Living with Depression, David Zwirner, Paris, 2023

A related work, Little Friend (2023), is on view in the gallery’s presentation at Frieze.

Josh Smith, Little Friend, 2023

“I hope people experience these sculptures in a reflective way … that they come across them and have a moment to reflect.”

—Josh Smith

Josh Smith, Friend, 2023. Photo by Josh Hems

Josh Smith: Living with Depression

On View in Paris

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Friend, 2023

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Josh Smith
Friend, 2023