Josh Kolbo

Josh Kolbo’s practice foregrounds the physicality of images. He collapses the distinction between photography and sculpture by troubling the boundaries between image and object, flatness and three-dimensionality, and representation and reality. His photo-sculptural installations extend the conventions of photography to fully inhabit three-dimensional space through rolling, layering, and draping photographs into unexpected configurations that build narratives across separate, yet related works. Kolbo’s more recent works address what the artist calls “the simulated image”—a displacement of photography, which applies an image as a texture to a concept. Our ability to simulate reality has come to match our ability to record it. Kolbo’s layered practice explores how this historical development introduces new forms of entanglement between the image and the social, political, and economic forces that it emerges within. Josh Kolbo (b. 1984, Philadelphia) is a sculptor and photographer who lives and works in Brooklyn. His work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions including CONDO Project / Hosted by Project Native Informant, London; Société, Berlin; GOD / Primetime Space, New York. And in group exhibitions at pic.london, London; Künstlerhaus KM, Graz; The Mews Project Space, London; Märkischen Museum Witten, Witten; Salts, Basel; and Five Thirty Three, Los Angeles.