Joshua Smith: Hearts and Triangles

839 is pleased to present Hearts and Triangles, two new suites of paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Joshua Smith. 

The presentation marks Smith’s first solo show with 839 and his first in Los Angeles. Working with brightly colored monochrome paintings on shaped canvases, Smith’s practice draws from geometric abstraction, graphic design, the readymade, and semiotics. Hearts and Triangles extends longstanding formal concerns into a meditation on visual symbols that have accrued cultural and political meaning.

Five heart-shaped monochrome paintings (blue, yellow, green, orange, and black) occupy the front section of the gallery, while five vivid red inverted triangle paintings are hung in the back. Each work is painted on a custom-shaped wood panel stretched with raw canvas, with the painted surface extending just beyond the edge and leaving a band of raw canvas exposed on the sides. Viewed frontally, the even hue seems to hover seamlessly, while in profile, the object quality of the piece becomes apparent.[1]

The colloquial heart shape may be the most widely recognized pictogram in contemporary culture. It bears little resemblance to the anatomical organ from which it takes its name, but centuries of repetition have rendered it invisible as a construction. It circulates effortlessly through emojis, advertising, mass media, and commercial imagery, carrying ideas of love, intimacy, desire, generosity, and care.[2] The shape has likewise occupied an enduring place in art history, from Jim Dine’s serial exploration of the motif, to Niki de Saint Phalle’s use of it as a vibrant emblem of pleasure and femininity, to Milton Glaser’s transformation of it into one of the most recognizable graphics of the twentieth century.[3]

The rear gallery installation recalls Blinky Palermo’s monochrome triangle as a spatial intervention while engaging the inverted red triangle’s rapidly evolving associations. If the heart has become one of society’s most stable symbols, the inverted red triangle is one whose meaning is still being actively negotiated.

In recent years, the inverted red triangle has circulated online, appearing in combat footage as a graphic marker indicating Israeli military targets of resistance strikes, before spreading across social media and protest culture as a broader sign of solidarity with Palestinians and opposition to Israeli state violence. The form also echoes the red triangle of the Palestinian flag, which points downward when hung vertically. Some Zionists have claimed its use is threatening or antisemitic, a characterization Smith and the gallery do not support. In 2024, Meta restricted use of the inverted red triangle emoji[4], and Germany’s Bundestag voted to ban the symbol.[5] Beyond this context, the downward red triangle also functions in popular visual culture as a sign of decline, appearing in financial markets and digital interfaces as shorthand for loss, failure, crisis, or social collapse.

Smith approaches the inverted red triangle as a readymade: a graphic form already authored by history, media, and public discourse. The same image can simultaneously signify military targeting, financial loss, political resistance, social decline, or fear, depending on context.[6] The upright red triangle, conversely, has long been an international distress signal. It was also the first emblem to receive legal protection in the U.K., with a trademark issued to Bass Brewing Company in 1875. As Dexter Sinister (David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey) observed: “The triangle is a symbol of generative power and spiritual unity. Although these broad interpretations occur in many cultures throughout history, because of their formal simplicity they can be invested with infinite subjective meanings.”[7] Hearts and Triangles observes how these differing implications coexist, overlap, and compete for interpretation. 

Installed higher than the average line of sight, the triangle paintings make one conscious of being positioned beneath the works rather than looking at them head on. Viewers unfamiliar with the triangle’s recent circulation may encounter the series first as a formal exercise in color, proportion, repetition, and installation, what Felix Gonzalez-Torres described as “yet another minimalist ecstasy.”[8]

Taken together, the show juxtaposes two abstract icons at different moments in the semiotic life cycle. One has become so culturally familiar that its artificiality has all but disappeared; the other is still actively acquiring meaning. Between them lies a meditation on how form migrates through culture, how abstraction becomes political, and how symbols increasingly circulate faster than consensus can form around them.

Smith’s solidarity with the Palestinian struggle is present here as he examines the complicated ways symbols circulate, transform, and accumulate new significance. 20% of sales from the exhibition will be donated to London-based mutual aid group The Sameer Project, supporting displaced families in Gaza amid the ongoing genocide. The Sameer Project has recently been forced to pause its daily operations after running out of funds; 839 commits to support the project’s efforts to restart its emergency response.

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[1] With respect and love to Donald Judd for “Specific Objects” (1965), of course.

[2] According to a 2021 poll by the Unicode Consortium, the red heart is the second most popular emoji globally, after the crying laughing face.

[3] Glaser’s “I Love New York” logo, sketched in the back of a taxi in 1977, generates millions of dollars in revenue for the state of NY each year. “I’m flabbergasted by what happened to this little, simple, nothing of an idea,” he told The Village Voice in 2011. See Jen Doll, “Milton Glaser on New Yorkers: ‘For Better or Worse You’re Here, and Doomed to Be Here,” The Village Voice (November 23, 2011).

[4] Sam Biddle, “Facebook and Instagram Restrict the Use of the Red Triangle Emoji Over Hamas Association,” The Intercept (October 2, 2024).

[5] “Germany bans inverted red triangle symbol used by Hamas,” Middle East Monitor (July 8, 2024).

[6] This is not unlike the case of the inverted pink triangle in 1930s Nazi Germany, used to shame gay men and later appropriated and turned upward in the 1980s by queer activists from the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). See Douglas Crimp and Adam Rolston, AIDS Demo Graphics (Seattle: Bay Press, 1990).

[7] Dexter Sinister, Identity, projection and booklet commissioned by Artists Space, New York and Tramway, Glasgow, 2011.

[8] Felix González-Torres, wall text for Forbidden Colors, 1988. Acrylic on panel, 20 x 68 inches. Four parts: 20 x 16 inches each. Collection of MOCA, Los Angeles.

Joshua Smith (b. 1983, Houston) is an artist based in Los Angeles. He received a BFA from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan, and attended the AICAD New York Studio Program. He has had solo exhibitions at Albert Baronian (Brussels), Essex Flowers, SOUTHFIRST, Shoot the Lobster, PACS Gallery, West Street Gallery, Art Production Fund, Artists Space, and John Connelly Presents (all New York). His work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at Leroy’s and 839 (both Los Angeles), Marlborough Gallery (London), MoMA PS1 (New York), White Flag Projects (St. Louis), and has been written about in ARTnews, Artforum, Interview, New York Magazine, and The New York Times. He co-founded the itinerant exhibition series Apartment Show (New York, 2009-2011), the artist-run gallery Essex Flowers (New York, 2013-), and 839 (Los Angeles, 2024-).

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839 N. Cherokee Ave
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Open Saturdays, 12-6 pm, and by appointment

Accessibility and Parking: For the opening reception, we recommend public transit or parking in front of Bancroft Middle School on Las Palmas Ave., a short walk from the gallery. Please note that the gallery has a porch with four steps. Two cats live on the premises; guests with allergies may wish to plan accordingly.