FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:Zak SmithA Show About NothingOc...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Zak Smith

A Show About Nothing

October 7th through November 6th, 2010



Fredericks and Freiser Gallery is distressed to have to announce that
Zak Smith keeps refusing to make art about anything and we don't know why.



We keep going "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-centred 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 counternarrative to popular depictions of gender and
sexuality?" and he goes "Nope."



And we keep saying, "Hey, come on, make some conceptual art. That's what
everyone's doing and it's terribly thought-provoking--haven't you
noticed how much more thoughtful

people are these days? And we know you're into, like, politics and stuff, conceptual art is really progressive--look at all this progress we're constantly seeing thanks to the phenomenal impact conceptual art's

had on everyone."



But he doesn't listen, he keeps just making pictures that are pretty.
Well, beautiful. I mean, ok, we have to admit the pictures are truly gorgeous and more visually absorbing than anything

we've ever seen. But, really--come one--this is a side issue.
Unparalleled and visceral sensual pleasure--is anybody really
interested in that? These are difficult times and we keep trying to

explain to Smith that the only way to tackle them is to hire some
assistant to make something extremely boring and give it a title that sounds like
some stoner trying to remember something Nietzsche said.  But

Zak Smith just keeps not making conceptual art.



"But it's so subversive and sophisticated!" we say "And it makes money!"



"No," he says "I have to stay here at my desk and finish making this look pretty."

"But
our attachment to outdated Judeo-Christian cultural assumptions demands
we can't allow ourselves to accept pleasure unless it has some meaning."

"Sucks to be you, I guess."



"What about that thing Roland Barthes said--'Everything has a meaning,
or nothing has. To put it another way, one could say that art is without
noise'. I mean the pictures must mean something, right?"

"Maybe. Who cares?"

"But
it's ok if we tell people they mean something, right? Like they might
be able to put their own meaning in there if they want?"

"Sure, whatever."

About The Artist:



Zak Smith was born in 1976 and lives in works in Los Angeles. His
work is, somewhat surprisingly, included in several public collections including The Museum of
Modern Art, New York and The Whitney Museum of American Art. His
work has been exhibited at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The
Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, The Contemporary Museum of Art, Baltimore;
and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, where he was included
in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. In addition to his
recently published memoir "We Did Porn" about his experiences "acting"
in adult films, two books of his artwork have been published--"Pictures
of Girls" and "Pictures Showing What Happens
on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow".