Chicago Fisticuffs

GARY SIMMONS

Gary Simmons references film, architecture, and American popular culture in paintings and drawings that address race, class, and memory on both personal and collective levels. In his 2010 exhibition "Midnight Matinee," Simmons used images of drive-in theater marquees and houses from vintage horror films to reflect on ghosts and abandoned pasts. Simmons has centered much of his practice on erasure. Early on he drew in white chalk on readymade chalkboards or directly onto slate-painted walls, then smudged the images with his hands, and in recent years he has adapted the process to canvas, using pigment, oil paint, and cold wax.