Gary Simmons: Public Enemy

Gary Simmons: Public Enemy is the first comprehensive career survey of the work of multidisciplinary artist Gary Simmons (b. 1964, New York; lives in Los Angeles). The most in-depth presentation of Simmons’s work to date, the exhibition covers thirty years of the artist’s career, encompassing approximately seventy works.

Gary Simmons. Lineup, 1993. — Photo: Ron Amstutz.

Gary Simmons. Step into the Arena (The Essentialist Trap) (detail), 1994. — Photo: Ron Amstutz.

Since the late 1980s Simmons has played a key role in situating questions of race, class, and gender identity at the center of contemporary art discourse. Notable for his early application of conceptual artistic strategies, Simmons exposes and analyzes histories of racism inscribed in US visual culture. Over the course of his career, Simmons has revealed traces of these histories in the fields of sports, cinema, literature, music, and architecture and urbanism, while drawing heavily on popular genres such as hip-hop, horror, and science fiction. Guided by an internal logic, his approach is cool, analytical, and unflinching in its interrogation of intense historical narratives, yet the results consistently deliver a strong emotional charge.

In this timely exhibition—accompanied by a major exhibition catalogue and slate of related programs—visitors will gain a holistic understanding of the complex and profoundly moving work of this groundbreaking and influential artist.

Organization and support

Gary Simmons: Public Enemy is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

Gary Simmons: Public Enemy is curated by René Morales, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, and Jadine Collingwood, Assistant Curator, with Jack Schneider, Curatorial Associate, of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Works in this exhibition contain signifiers of racial hatred and violence, including nooses and Ku Klux Klan imagery.

Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark Programming

As part of the Gary Simmons: Public Enemy exhibition PAMM’s auditorium features a video that is a compilation of programs hosted on the installation artwork entitled Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark. The video on view in the museum auditorium is a compilation of programs hosted on Simmons’s stage during previous exhibitions in New Orleans; San Francisco; Indio, California; Los Angeles; and Chicago.

Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark consists of a stage and speakers that, when activated, serve as a venue for live performances. The title of the work, which references Lee “Scratch” Perry’s legendary Kingston studio, the Black Ark, builds on this past in order to evoke a dynamic of memory and renewal. Like Perry’s studio space—much of which he constructed using repurposed materials and DIY fabrication—Simmons’s installation provides a platform for artists to come together and forge new sound out of reclaimed parts.

For a schedule of new programs and performances that will take place at PAMM on February 15 -19, 2024 and March 21-25, 2024 please visit pamm.org/events for updates.