Simon Lee Gallery, Hong Kong is pleased to announce a presentation of new works by Gary Simmons, comprising drawings and a painting, which continue the artist’s ongoing exploration into the politics of race and identity through his signature ‘erasure drawings’. In this new series, Simmons positions seemingly benign images of lighthouses and watchtowers in comparison to one another in terms of function and as metaphors for surveillance in the US.
About Gary Simmons
Gary Simmons was born in 1964 in New York, NY and lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY in 1988, and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA in 1990. Simmons first rose to public attention when his work was included in the 1993 Whitney Biennial and a year later, in Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art curated by Thelma Golden, also at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Recent solo museum exhibitions include Fade to Black, California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2017); Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA (2017); Gary Simmons: Ghost Reels, The Drawing Centre, New York, NY (2016); Gary Simmons: Culture Lab Public Projects, Culture Lab Detroit, Detroit, MI (2016); Gary Simmons, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL (2014) and Focus: Gary Simmons, Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX (2013). In 2015 he was included in both All The World’s Futures at the 56th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy and Sharjah Biennial 12: The past, the present, the possible at the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah. Simmons is the recipient of several major awards, including the the Joyce Alexander Wein Prize awarded by the Studio Museum in Harlem (2013); the USA Gund Fellowship awarded by the Gund Foundation (2007) and the National Endowment for the Arts Interarts Grant (1990).