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Revision as of 02:09, 14 May 2006
Artist Zak Smith was born in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1976, and grew up in Washington, D.C. After receiving a BFA from Cooper Union in 1998, he studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and went on to receive an MFA from Yale University in 2001. He lives and works in Brooklyn.
Smith's body of work primarily comprises portraits and illustrations executed in acrylic and ink. An enduring interest in comic books informs the artist's dynamic and obsessively detailed depictions of the people, objects, and stories that inhabit his world. Allied with punk and hardcore culture and the DIY aesthetic associated with these movements, Smith draws on traditions of decorative art to produce visually complex, labor-intensive pictures characterized by intricate patterns and vivid coloration.
Smith is best known for his portraits of female subjects - with an emphasis on eroticism as well as the mundane aspects of his subjects' lives - and his page-by-page illustrations for Gravity's Rainbow. The book Zak Smith: Pictures of Girls (Distributed Art Publishers, 2005) includes selected plates from the series Girls in the Naked Girl Business, 100 Girls and 100 Octopuses, and One Picture for Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow, in addition to stand-alone pieces from the period 2000-2005. In 2006 Tin House will release a book of the Gravity's Rainbow illustrations, which were featured in the 2004 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art and are now in the collection of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Other public collections containing Smith's work include the Museum of Modern Art and the Progressive Corporation. Zak Smith is represented by Fredericks & Freiser in New York City.
Pornography
In February, 2006, Zak Smith made his pornographic debut, under the pseudonym "Zak Sabbath," in the to-be-released VCA film "Barbed Wire Kiss," by director Benny Profane (whose name is itself taken from the Pynchon novel V..) He shares a scene with Veronica Jett. In the widely read porn blog Fleshbot, Smith mentions working on a "NYU thesis project" entitled "Freaky Kids I & II," in 1996 but declares, "here's where I'm making the BIG money." He followed this up with an appearance opposite Pixie Pearl in Eon McKai's debut film for Vivid Entertainment, "Girls Lie."
Online Resources
View works by Zak Smith:
View articles about Zak Smith:
- The Modern Word
- May 2002 ArtForum review by Martha Schwendener
- 2004 Whitney Biennial catalogue
- Zak Smith's Second Porn, Fleshbot
See also
External links
- Fredericks & Freiser gallery
- Zak Smith: Pictures of Girls on Amazon.com
- Official Barbed Wire Kiss movie website