Joshua Smith
- Artist Statement
- Curator Statement
- Website
Artist Statement
Untitled (speakers) is a stacking of two custom-made speakers my grandfather made and gave to me as a high-school graduation gift. Every one minute and 44 seconds Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely” plays in its entirety from the speakers. The piece is loaded, referencing a handful of issues, among them a subtle jabbing not at minimalism or late modernism, but at the contemporary rush to further deconstruct these movements. These specific objects are tarnished from neglect and other personal encounters. Their stains, burns, and rips implicate a variety of possible destructive forces and invite, then, a blatantly romantic reading of the work in opposition to a formal one. Viewers are further distracted from any aesthetic deconstruction by Orbison, a hallmark of sentimentality and tragedy whose “Only the Lonely” calls into play an attempt to connect with the clichéd, though painfully real sensations of love and loss. I further dramatize the relationship between an artist and his work by attempting to exploit and sell a gift. Coupling this with the celebration of Orbison’s pathos, Untitled (speakers) simply asks its audience to think of gifts, of family, and of love, and to resist the distraction of aesthetics, or the annoyance of deconstruction.
Curator Statement
Two speakers from the “bonus room” of a cul-de-sac Brady Bunch house purr the Ray Orbison song, “Only the Lonely”: that’s what Joshua Smith’s Untitled (speakers), installation consists of. And it speaks to our collective solace, memory, and genuine longing for nostalgia. The suburbs of our minds coalesce with the soundtrack of our youth, and maybe even our parents’ youth. Over and over the song plays, and the words make little distinction between empathy and sympathy, leading to personal, not universal soliloquies.
