Gary Simmons: This Must Be the Place

Gary Simmons. Photo: @Keith Lubow
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Gary Simmons: This Must Be the Place
26th May, 2023 – 29th July, 2023
Hauser & Wirth London
23 Savile Row
London
W1S 2ET

Gary Simmons is known for using icons and stereotypes of popular culture to create works that address personal and collective experiences of race and class. For the artist’s first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth in London, Simmons will present a selection of brand-new paintings and sculptures. In these new works, Simmons continues to use erasure of the image as a powerful and recurring theme, a formal and aesthetic breakthrough technique that has informed much of his work and holds deep cultural significance.

Gary Simmons: This Must Be the Place
Gary Simmons, Ghost Town Skies, 2023

Used as a form of action painting, Simmons wipes the surface of his work while the paint is still wet in order to smear the image so that it simultaneously emerges and disappears. The tropes of erasure and ephemerality suggest the fleeting nature of memory and histories re-written, particularly in relation to the politics of race. The first comprehensive survey of Simmons’ work, ‘Gary Simmons: Public Enemy,’ will open at The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago from 13 June – 1 October 2023 and will be the most in-depth presentation of Simmons’ work to date, covering thirty years of the artist’s career.

Gary Simmons: This Must Be the Place opens on the 26th of May, 2023 until the 29th of July, 2023 at Hauser & Wirth London

©2023 Gary Simmons, Hauser & Wirth