Collection: Gary Simmons

Gary Simmons (born 1964) is an American artist whose practice centres on erasure as both a formal and conceptual strategy. Working primarily in chalk on blackboard surfaces, he draws images — often derived from popular culture, racial caricature and American entertainment history — and then smears them, producing ghostly residues that make the process of erasure visible while leaving traces of the original image. Simmons has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and represented the United States at the São Paulo Bienal in 1998. His work addresses race, memory, spectacle and the persistence of imagery in American visual culture.