Josh Smith was born in Okinawa in 1976 and grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee. He lives and works in New York. To date, his multifaceted and promising career comprises individual exhibitions in Paris, Oslo, Brussels, New York and Chicago as well as recent exhibition in the Vienna Museum of Modern Art. “I am an artist who works with a variety of different types of imagery. And for the Ringier Annual Report 2008, I aim to set the stage so that the reports can convey a plain and straightforward message.” says Smith.

Beatrix Ruf, trustee of the Ringier Collection and Director of the Kunsthalle Zürich, writes the following about the artist: “The works of Josh Smith update the painting medium and hand-made pictures with amazing ease and irritating earnestness. Josh Smith risks subjectivity by means of conventional as well as arbitrary custom; the image as well as that which we expect from its author. Unpretentiously and in unspectacular manner, he thus free the way for a picture.”

Annual Report 2007 amongst Switzerland’s loveliest books.

According to tradition, the Ringier Annual Report is a mix between figures and art. And in fact, last year’s Ringier Annual Report (2007), created by the Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss, was honoured with the award of one of the year’s beautifulst books by the Swiss Federal Office for Culture.

The Ringier Annual Report is available in the languages German, English and French.

Ringier Group Communications