Gary Simmons is an American artist that represents the icons and stereotypes of the American popular culture. Interested in the medium's ambiguous and impermanent nature, his signature “erasure” technique is a process in which the artist partially obscures elements of his drawings and paintings, leaving behind disintegrated traces of his subject.

Born in 1964, in New York, the American artist depicts icons and stereotypes of the American popular culture. Simmons attracted a lot of attention in the 90s with his “erasure drawings,” using chalkboards found in an abandoned school as canvases, Simmons tends to probe with his artworks the misconceptions of class and racial identity. He graduated from the California Institute of the Arts and back to Manhattan he opened a vocational school. Interested in the medium's ambiguous and impermanent nature, his signature “erasure” technique is a process in which the artist partially obscures elements of his drawings and paintings, leaving behind disintegrated traces of his subject. In recent years, he has adapted the process to canvas using pigment, oil paint and cold wax. His inspiration comes mainly from American films, architecture and culture. His work has been acquired by major public art institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern Art, The Studio Museum of Harlem, and the Whitney Museum of Art.

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.

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. Using his technical feature of “erasure drawings” he creates apocalyptic landscapes giving sensation of a lonely atmosphere, the letters have a ghostly appearance even as they're burning.

The burning and reflecting on the mirroring surface of this unreal background text of "Purple Haze" reinforces the mysterious quality of Simmons’ imagery while suggesting movement, the fleetingness of time, the pliability of history, and the inevitable fading of both cultural and personal memory.

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“ My aim is to integrate the theoretical with the beautiful to create stunning objects. „

—Gary Simmons