Hauser & Wirth
27. B-Sides

Gary Simmons

© Gary Simmons. Photo: Tito Molina, HRDWRKER

One of the foremost artists of a generation which emerged during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Gary Simmons has achieved wide acclaim over the past three decades for his work which explores the politics of race, class and social stereotypes through painting, sculpture, sound and architectural environments. Simmons uses imagery drawn from popular culture to create works that address personal and collective memories.

Born in New York in 1964, Simmons received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1988, and his MFA from CalArts in 1990, studying under the tutelage of Charles Gaines, Michael Asher, Catherine Lord, and others. Early in his practice, Simmons established a studio in a former school in New York City. At this stage, he was working predominantly in sculpture, a medium he would return to in subsequent decades. Works from this period, such as ‘Big Dunce’ (1989), use schoolroom objects to address racial inequality and institutional racism through the filter of childhood experience, themes seen most explicitly in ‘Six-X’ (1989), comprising six child-sized Ku Klux Klan uniforms hanging from a schoolhouse coatrack.

Simmons’ use of pedagogical motifs, in particular readymade chalkboards, led to the formal and aesthetic breakthrough that would inform much of his subsequent work, in which erasure of the image has been a powerful and recurring theme. Outlines of characters, scenes and words—based on 20th-century cartoons steeped in the racist traditions of minstrelsy, disappeared architectural sites, vintage film title cards, evaporating clouds of smoke and stars—are drawn or painted then blurred and smeared by hand. The tropes of erasure and ephemerality suggest the fleeting nature of memory and histories re-written. As the artist explains: ‘I started to think about how images on blackboards can never be fully erased. It was about trying to erase a stereotype and the traces of the racial pain that you drag along with you.’ A landmark piece commissioned for the Whitney Biennial, ‘Wall of Eyes’ (1993), picturing a smudged field of cartoon eyes drawn with chalk over slate paint applied directly to the wall, revealed the aesthetic possibilities of chalkboard at a monumental scale.

In further key commissions, Simmons has expanded beyond the confines of museum and gallery walls, creating performative and site-specific works which underline a relationship to a trajectory of art history that includes minimalism and conceptual art. For ‘Sky Erasure Drawings’ (1996), commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, airplanes temporarily inscribed vapor stars in the daytime sky using liquid paraffin. For his immersive installation, ‘Fade to Black’ (2017), for the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, Simmons created five monumental wall drawings featuring the titles of vintage silent films and the names of largely forgotten African American actors in big typewriter-style letters blurred with ghostly traces. In a series of works from 2019, Simmons mined the architecture of surveillance through depictions of watchtowers and lighthouses. Deliberately ambiguous, these works collapsed the boundaries between signifiers of safety and those of control.

Simmons’ immersion in music has continually informed his practice which draws inspiration from dub, punk, hip-hop, reggae, and rap. Particularly influenced by the genres’ race and class-focused politics, the artist has created a number of works tracing the voices in music that have shaped contemporary culture. Simmons attracted significant critical attention in 2014 for his stacked speaker piece ‘Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark’. Inspired by Jamaican sound systems, the work is a living sculpture, with performers invited to activate it and then leave the configuration they utilized behind until the next performance. The work’s ongoing history offers both a contrasting and complementary approach to the record of the past offered by the artist’s erasure paintings.

For a site-specific installation commissioned for Culture Lab Detroit in 2016, Simmons was inspired by the guerrilla marketing style of fly-posting to promote gigs. Using found posters sourced from flea markets and the internet, he manipulated the originals, saturating the colors or reworking the texts, before layering onto the wall. This process has subsequently made its way into other works on plywood and canvas that evoke the fragmentation between individual and collective memory that preoccupies much of Simmons’ practice.

In his most recent works, Simmons continues to engage with popular culture, however, in an increasingly nuanced and abstracted way, as his focus shifts towards the history and materiality of painting and sculpture. Simmons has also reintroduced racist cartoon characters such as Bosko and Honey from the Looney Toons franchise and the crows from Disney’s film, ‘Dumbo’. Combined with the use of erasure, the artist references the attempt to cover up the engrained prejudices revealed by the popularity of such cartoons. Though these subjects first appeared in Simmons chalkboard drawings from the early 1990s, his newest works demonstrate an exploration of painterly issues such as background, depth of field, process and layering, citing Albert Oehlen and Martin Kippenberger as influences. The process involves a constant building and removal of up to fifteen layers of paint, evoking layered histories lying deep beneath the canvas. Simmons likens this effect to aged chalkboards, containing the traces of years of markings.

Gary Simmons has been the subject of solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; California African American Museum, Los Angeles; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; and Kunsthaus Zürich. Selected group exhibitions include Museum of Modern Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; among others. Simmons was featured in Thelma Golden’s landmark 1994 ‘Black Male’ exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Franklin Sirmans’ 2014 Prospect Triennial in New Orleans, and Okwui Enwezor’s ‘All the World’s Futures,’ for the 2015 Venice Biennale.

In 2021, Simmons was appointed a National Academician by the National Academy of Design. He is the recipient of the Joyce Alexander Wein Prize, Studio Museum of Harlem; USA Gund Fellowship; Penny McCall Foundation Grant; InterArts Grant; National Endowment for the Arts; and the Aspen Award for Art.

The first comprehensive institutional survey of Simmons’ work, ‘Gary Simmons: Public Enemy,’ was on view at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2023 and traveled to Pérez Art Museum Miami from 2023 – 2024.

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Selected Artworks

Everforward…

1993

Fade to Black

2017

Fight Night

2014

Sweet Science

2014

Everlast Champion

1991

Here’s….Honey

1992

Step Into the Arena (The Essentialist Trap)

1994

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Biography

Print

Born

New York NY, 1964

Education

BFA, School of Visual Arts, New York NY, 1988

MFA, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia CA, 1990

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Solo Exhibitions

2024

Hauser & Wirth, 'Thin Ice', New York NY

2023

PAMM Pérez Art Museum Miami, 'Gary Simmons: Public Enemy', Miami FL (Travelling exhibition) 

MCA Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 'Gary Simmons: Public Enemy', Chicago IL (Travelling exhibition) 

Hauser & Wirth, 'Gary Simmons. This Must Be the Place', London, UK 

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Group Exhibitions

2025

Sapieha Palace, ‘Breaking the Joints’, Vilnius, Lithuania

2024

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 'Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture', San Francisco CA 

MAB FAAP - Museu de Arte Brasileira, 'Ancestral: Afro-Americas', São Paulo, Brazil
Norton Museum of Art, 'Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing', West Palm Beach FL
The Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, 'Scrawlspace', New York NY 

Detroit Institute of Arts, 'Regeneration. Black Cinema 1898 - 1971', Detroit MI (Traveling Exhibition) 

The Hole, 'Hollywood Dream Bubble: Ed Ruscha’s Influence in Los Angeles and Beyond', Los Angeles CA 

Hauser & Wirth, 'RETROaction', cur. Kate Fowle, Homi K. Bhabha, Charles Gaines, Ellen Tani, Los Angeles CA (Traveling exhibition) 

The Institutum, 'Translations. Afro-Asian Poetics', Singapore 

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Awards & Grants

2022

Aspen Award for Art, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen CO

2013

The Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York NY

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Bibliography

Monographs

2023

Morales, René, Collingwood, Jane (eds.), 'Gary Simmons. Public Enemy', Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, New York: DelMonico Books, 2023, ill. (exh. cat.)

2012

Ferrando, Alexander, Mozo, Manuela (eds.), 'Paradise', Bologna: Damiani, 2012, ill.

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Publications

2024

Alesandrini, Emily, Momoh, Lucia Olubunmi R., 'Scrawlspace', New York: The 8th Floor, 2024, ill. (exh. cat.)

Pietropaolo, Francesco (ed.), Storr, Robert, 'Focal Points. Between a Rock and a Hard Place', London: Heni Publishing, pp. 23, 68, 2024, ill. 

Cochran, Sara, Fischl, Eric, Lipsyte, Robert (et al.), 'Strike Fast, Dance Lightly: Artists on Boxing', New York: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2024, pp. 43, 77, 173, ill. (exh. cat.)

2023

School of Visual Arts (eds.), 'School of Visual Arts. 75 Years', New York: School of Visual Arts, 2023, p. 344, ill. 

Colleción Jumex (eds.), 'Todo Se Vuelve Más Ligero', Mexico City: Colleción Jumex, 2023, p. 83, ill. (exh. cat.) 

Centre Pompidou (eds.), 'Les Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne', Paris: Éditions du Centre Pompidou, no. 162, Winter 2022/2023, pp. 55-69, ill. 

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Press

2024

Rodney, Seph, 'The Never-Ending Cycle of Fear and Desire', on: hyperallergic.com, 30 December 2024, ill.
Brida, Giuliana, 'Here Are the 12 Must-See Exhibitions on View in New York’s Galleries This Month', on: culturedmag.com, 9 December 2024, ill.
Duray, Dan, 'One Fine Show: ‘Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971’ at the Detroit Institute of the Arts', on: observer.com, 23 February 2024, ill. 

Enrico, 'Gary Simmons: Public Enemy / Pérez Art Museum Miami', on: vernissage.tv, 10 January 2024, ill. 

2023

Granados, Marlowe, 'Gary Simmons on Censorship, Minstrelsy, and the Scourge of Art Fairs', on: interviewmagazine.com, 20 December 2023, ill. 

Markowitz, Douglas, 'Miami Art Week Is Over, but There's Still Plenty to See at Museums and Galleries', on: miaminewtimes.com, 12 December 2023, ill. 

___, 'Gary Simmons "Public Enemy"', on: whitewall.art, 6 December 2023, ill. 

Donoghue, Katy, ' René Morales Curates “Gary Simmons: Public Enemy” at PAMM', on: whitewall.art, 5 December 2023, ill. 

Markowitz, Douglas, 'At PAMM, Gary Simmons Addresses What America Can't Erase', on: miaminewtimes.com, 30 November 2023, ill. 

Rabb, Maxwell, '12 Must-See Gallery and Museum Shows during Art Basel in Miami Beach 2023', on: artsy.net, 29 November 2023, ill. 

___, 'The Ruscha Effect: Seven Artists Weigh In on the Impact of the Great Ed Ruscha', on: artnews.com, 8 September 2023, ill. 

Joyce, Erin, 'How Gary Simmons Embraces the In-Between', on: hyperallergic.com, 3 September 2023, ill. 

Johnson, Kevin C., 'New St. Louis Art Museum exhibition shows "hip-hop culture is more than music"', on: stltoday.com, 17 August 2023, ill. 

Lopez, Ruth, 'The Big Review: "Gary Simmons: Public Enemy" at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago', on: theartnewspaper.com, 31 July 2023, ill. 

Monaghan, Marc, 'Celebrating Chicago’s Social Dance History', on: hpherald.com, 27 July 2023, ill. 

Binlot, Ann, '"Public Enemy" charts 30 years of Gary Simmons', on: documentjournal.com, 7 July 2023, ill. 

Sage Kay, Hannah, 'Gary Simmons: "Public Enemy"', on: brooklynrail.org, July 2023, ill. 
Ghassemitari, Shawn, 'Gary Simmons Presents "Public Enemy" at MCA Chicago', on: hypebeast.com, 30 June 2023, ill. 

Loos, Ted, 'The "Haunting" of Gary Simmons', on: nytimes.com, 9 June 2023, ill.

Diehl, Travis, 'The Grand Gestures of Gary Simmons', on: frieze.com, 7 June 2023, ill.

Lloyd-Smith, Harriet, ' For London Gallery Weekend 2023, the mood is hardcore', on: wallpaper.com, 1 June 2023, ill.

Diehl, Travis, 'Gary Simmons', in: Frieze, London, no. 236, June/July/August 2023, pp. 74-81, cover, ill.

___, 'Viewing "Gary Simmons This Must Be the Place"', on: thewickculture.com, 30 May 2023, ill.

Abrams, Amah-Rose, 'Gary Simmons on the erasure of racist tropes: "I don't want them to be forgotten for their menace"', on: wallpaper.com, 26 May 2023, ill.

Cane, Hesper, 'London Gallery Weekend Announces Performances, Curators, Events, and Live Curated Routes', on: widewalls.ch, 12 May 2023, ill.

Harris, Gareth, 'Building bridges post-Brexit: London Gallery Weekend to pay for European curators to attend third edition', on: theartnewspaper.com, 7 March 2023, ill.

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Audiovisuals

2023

NTS Radio, 'Rough Version w/ Gary SImmons' [Gary Simmons is interviewed by Francesca Gavin], 26 June 2023 

The Art Newspaper, 'A brush with...Gary Simmons' [Gary Simmons speaks with Ben Luke], 7 June 2023 

2022

The Baer Faxt, 'No Reserve Presents: "Remembering Tomorrow" at Hauser & Wirth' [Gary Simmons is interviewed by Josh Baer], March 2022 NBC 4

'An Art Oasis within a Concrete Jungle' [Interview with Gary Simmons discussing 'Gary Simmons. Remembering Tomorrow' at Hauser & Wirth], March 2022

Exhibitions

Films

See more on Youtube

Getting to Know: Gary Simmons

Gary Simmons on ‘This Must Be the Place’

In Conversation: Gary Simmons and Ekow Eshun

Gary Simmons: Residue, Traces, Ghosts

Events

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News

Ursula

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