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"But our attachment to outdated Judeo-Christian cultural assumptions demands we can't allow ourselves to accept pleasure unless it has some meaning."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