Tag Archives: Gary Simmons

ARTISTS FOR BIDEN FUNDRAISER

Leave a reply

Over 100 artists and estates have donated works for a fundraiser supporting Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.* Presented on Platform.art—an initiative developed by David Zwirner—participating galleries include Regen Projects, Jack Shainman, Gladstone, Lehmann Maupin, Petzel, and Marian Goodman, as well as Gemini G.E.L.

Following a virtual kickoff earlier this week with vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris, Carrie Mae Weems, and Catherine Opie, the sale is now live. See link below for details.

ARTISTS FOR BIDEN

October 2–October 8, 2020.

Platform.art

*Participating artists and estates include Marina Adams, Doug Aitken, Richard Aldrich, John Baldessari (donated by Gemini G.E.L.), Alvin Baltrop, Walead Beshty, McArthur Binion, Dike Blair, Sebastian Blanck, Carol Bove, Cecily Brown, George Condo, Patricia Cronin, Sarah Crowner, N. Dash, Tara Donovan, Carroll Dunham, Marcel Dzama, William Eggleston, Rafa Esparza, Shepard Fairey, Rochelle Feinstein, Radamés “Juni” Figueroa​, Spencer Finch, Suzan Frecon, Charles Gaines, Jerrell Gibbs, Sam Gilliam, Joanne Greenbaum, Isca Greenfield-Sanders, Thomas Hager, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Tyler Haughey, Michael Heizer, Carmen Herrera, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jenny Holzer, Ridley Howard, Alex Hubbard, John Huggins, Ayana V. Jackson, Rashid Johnson, Deborah Kass, KAWS, Ellsworth Kelly, Jon Kessler, Toba Khedoori, Christine Sun Kim, Jeff Koons, Doron Langberg, Liz Larner, Bonnie Lautenberg, An-My Lê, Roy Lichtenstein, Maya Lin, Robert Longo, Emmanuel Lubezki, Brice Marden, Julie Mehretu, Marilyn Minter, Ivan Morley, Rebecca Morris, Vik Muniz, Wangechi Mutu, Jordan Nassar, Alice Neel, Shirin Neshat, Catherine Opie, Angel Otero, Jack Pierson, Lari Pittman, Martin Puryear, Christina Quarles, Robert Rauschenberg (donated by Gemini G.E.L.), Alexis Rockman, Ugo Rondinone, Victoria Roth, Ed Ruscha, Alison Saar, Betye Saar, Fred Sandback, Fanny Sanín, Kenny Scharf, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, Amy Sillman, Gary Simmons, Laurie Simmons, Xaviera Simmons, Vaughn Spann, Tavares Strachan, Sarah Sze, Mika Tajima, Kyle Thurman, Fred Tomaselli, Leo Villareal, Charline von Heyl, Carrie Mae Weems, Lawrence Weiner, James Welling, Stanley Whitney, Kehinde Wiley, Chloe Wise, Christopher Wool, Rob Wynne, Lisa Yuskavage, and Andrea Zittel.

From top: Carrie Mae Weems, Remember to Dream, 2020, screenprint on rag paper, printed by Kaleb Hunkele of Standard Art Supply, image courtesy and © the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York; Michael Heizer, Blue Diorite, 1981, 89-lb. blue diorite in aluminum frame, image © Michael Heizer, courtesy Agnes Gund, the artist, and Gagosian, photograph by Rob McKeever, donated by a private collector; Carol Bove, Coy Satanism, 2020, stainless steel and urethane paint, image courtesy and © the artist and David Zwirner; Liz Larner, Fictile, 2010–2011, ceramic and epoxy, image courtesy and © the artist and Regen Projects; Kyle Thurman, Suggested Occupation 56 (Spring Image, travel nightly), 2020, gouache, graphite, and watercolor on paper in artist’s frame, image courtesy and © the artist and David Lewis; Charline von Heyl, The Sticky Hour, 2018, acrylic and crayon on linen, image courtesy and © the artist and Petzel Gallery; Tavares Strachan, We Are in This Together (Multi),, 2019, neon and transformers, image courtesy and © the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery; Jenny Holzer, selection from Truisms: Abuse of power comes as no surprise, 2015, dark labradorite footstool, image courtesy and © the artist and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Sam Gilliam, Untitled, 2020, watercolor on washi paper, image courtesy and © the artist and David Kordansky Gallery; KAWS, Together, 2017, painted bronze, image courtesy and © the artist; Alvin Baltrop, The Piers (profile portrait), n.d., gelatin silver print, image courtesy and © the Alvin Baltrop Trust, Third Streaming, and Galerie Buchholz; Lari Pittman, Portrait of a Human (Pathos, Ethos, Logos, Kairos #17), 2018, cel vinyl and spray paint on linen on wood panel, image courtesy and © the artist and Regen Projects; Ed Ruscha, We (#1), dry pigment and acrylic on paper, 2020, image courtesy and © the artist.

CHARLES GAINES IN CONVERSATION

Leave a reply

When I went to graduate school in the 1960s… I was faced with a dilemma… I was surrounded by ideas about art that I couldn’t identify with. I couldn’t identify with the practice of trying to decide what to put in a painting using a kind of intuition. Or looking at a painting as a vehicle for self-expression. It’s not that I looked down on that, or that I thought it was such a bad idea. It’s just that I wasn’t working in a manner that required that kind of behavior… Then I ran into a person who told me about a couple of books, which I bought and read. One was by the art historian Henri Focillon [1881–1943], called The Life of Forms in Art [1934]. The other was a big picture book on Tantric Buddhist art by Ajit Mookerjee [1915–1990]. In those books I began to find things that made sense to me in terms of art production.

[Focillon] had a Platonic perspective, that form was synonymous with number, with mathematics, with structure. And he said that form had a life of its own, had its own reciprocal fitness, had its own autonomous exigency..

This sounds like the tenets of high modernism. I don’t think it followed those tenets in talking about some kind of tautology or self-referential or self-reflexive apparatus. I saw it as a general critique of expressionism, which was central to my problem. I didn’t feel connected with the objects I was making, because when I made them, I wasn’t convinced that there was any connection between my motive to make something and the thing that I made. It just seemed arbitrary to me. I would see painters laboring in front of a painting, trying to decide whether a corner should be red or blue. To me it didn’t make any difference. It could be red or blue, you know? How can they feel good about a judgment that they make? On what basis do they establish this connection? And for the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out.

Focillon gave me the idea that you’re ultimately not the author of the object. You’re more like a vehicle of this realization without an author. With Tantric art I saw visual representation of the same idea. — Charles Gaines*

This weekend—in conjunction with his Hauser & Wirth exhibition CHARLES GAINES—PALM TREES AND OTHER WORKS—join Gaines in conversation with Thelma Golden, Laura Owens, and Gary Simmons.

ARTIST TALK—CHARLES GAINES IN CONVERSATION with THELMA GOLDEN, LAURA OWENS, and GARY SIMMONS

Sunday, November 3, at 3 pm.

Hauser & Wirth

901 East 3rd Street, downtown Los Angeles.

“Charles Gaines, January 31, 1995,” in ArtCenter Talks: Graduate Seminar, The First Decade 1986–1995, edited by Stan Douglas (New York: David Zwirner Books / Pasadena, CA: ArtCenter Graduate Press, 2016), 172–197.

See Gina Osterloh on Gaines’ Shadows series.

Charles Gaines—Palm Trees and Other Works, Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles, September 14, 2019–January 5, 2020, photographs by Fredrik Nilsen. Images courtesy and © the artist, the photographer, and Hauser & Wirth.

OKWUI ENWEZOR

Leave a reply

“We knew it was coming but the finality of his passing makes it even more devastating. Okwui was this enormously prophetic figure, wise beyond his years, whose insights—vision, if you will—literally shaped the universe many of us now inhabit. He was like an enormous tree in the glare, whose shadow provided refuge, hospitality, generosity, and love for so many.” — John Akomfrah

Okwui Enwezor—the great historian, curator, writer, editor, and former artistic director of Haus der Kunst—has died in Munich following four years of cancer treatment.

Enwezor, who was 55 at the time of his death, is celebrated for his paradigm-shifting directorship of Documenta 11 in 2002, and the 56th Venice Biennale—All the World’s Futures—in 2015.

A writer and editor in demand, Enwezor’s contributions will live on in the work of the artists he championed.

From top: Contemporary African Art Since 1980 (2009), by Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, image courtesy Damiani; John Akomfrah: Signs of Empire (2018), contributing text by Enwezor, image courtesy the New Museum; Candice Breitz: The Scripted Life (2010), contributing text by Enwezor, image courtesy Kunsthaus Bregenz; Recent Histories: Contemporary African Photography and Video Art from the Walther Collection (2017), contributing text by Enwezor, image courtesy Steidl and the Walther Collection; Gary Simmons: Paradise (2012), conversation with Enwezor, image courtesy Damiani; Kerry James Marshall: Painting and Other Stuff (2014), contributing text by Enwezor, image courtesy Ludion; Lyle Ashton Harris: Excessive Exposure (2010), text by Enwezor, image courtesy Gregory R. Miller & Co.; Home Lands–Land Marks: Contemporary Art from South Africa (2009), contributing text by Enwezor, image courtesy Haunch of Venison.

FOR JACK WHITTEN

Leave a reply

In a tribute to Jack Whitten, a group of his friends and colleagues, artists and curators—including Candida Alvarez, Jose Luis Blondet, Joshua Chambers Letson, Erin Christovale, Harry Dodge, Naima Keith, Diana Nawi, Betye Saar, Gary Simmons, Lily Blue Simmons, Bennett Simpson, and Alphaeus Taylor—will read from NOTES FROM THE WOODSHED, the just-published collection of Whitten’s writing.

 

JACK WHITTEN—NOTES FROM THE WOODSHED Reading and Launch

Saturday, August 25, at 3 pm.

hauserwirth.com/jack-whitten-notes-woodshed

hauserwirth.com/publications/jack-whitten

JACK WHITTEN—SELF PORTRAIT WITH SATELLITES, through September 23.

HAUSER & WIRTH, 901 East 3rd Street, downtown Los Angeles.

hauserwirth.com/jack-whitten-self-portrait-satellites

Above image courtesy of Hauser & Wirth.

Below: Jack Whitten in the early 1970s on the corner of Broadway and Broome Street, New York City. Courtesy the Estate of Jack Whitten.

ANY PLACE BUT HERE

Leave a reply

ANY PLACE BUT HERE—a site-specific performance at the California African American Museum by No)one Art House, conceived by Christopher Bordenave and Amie Cota—”explores themes of home and identity as reflected through the Great Migration—a 60-year span during which nearly 6 million African Americans moved from the South to cities in the North and West.”*

 

ANY PLACE BUT HERE—NO)ONE ART HOUSE

Tuesday, December 19, at 7 pm.

California African American Museum

600 State Drive, Exposition Park, Los Angeles.

Image credit: No)one Art House.