Artist Gary Simmons can recall the first time he heard Public Enemy on a dance floor, a transformative experience that still resonates with him decades later.
“It literally stopped everybody, because it was so unusual to hear somebody sampling and pulling sound effects off of tea kettles, whistles, chain link fences,” says Simmons from his studio in L.A. “It rocks a party today just as it would have 35 years ago.”
Simmons looked to that seminal ’80s New York hip-hop group, known for their political lyrics, for the title of his mid-career survey, “Gary Simmons: Public Enemy.” The second iteration of the exhibition opens at the Pérez Art Museum Miami on Tuesday, following its initial run at the MCA Chicago earlier this year. René Morales, formerly at PAMM and now at MCA Chicago, and Jadine Collingwood curated the exhibition, with Jack Schneider.
“Public Enemy had a massive effect on me early on, who they were and what they were and how they redefined hip-hop at the time. And then there’s the idea of the Black male being a public enemy in the public eye. You feel that day in and day out,” says Simmons, who often draws inspiration from music for titling his works and suggests metaphor through association. “They [Public Enemy] have this place in history that you automatically know that that’s about politics. That it’s about popular culture, Black popular culture; that it’s about pride and resistance, and all those things that go along with it.”
Simmons’ art interrogates issues of race, gender, visual culture and history, often incorporating pop culture to challenge long-standing narratives. The artist has developed a signature “chalky” style, where his images appear smudged, as though someone attempted to erase them. His work is often described as “timely,” and that descriptive holds for many of his pieces decades after they were created.
“There’s certain images that aren’t very easy for people to confront. And I think that that’s important,” he says of the 70 works on view. “Art isn’t always about making really comfortable, pretty images. Sometimes it’s about challenging people’s personal positions or having to welcome the thoughts and opinions of another side, another opinion,” he adds. “I was very happy that Renee and Franklin Sirmans [director of PAMM] down in Miami weren’t gun-shy to leave a lot of that kind of challenging, charged work in there.”
Not one to comb through social media, Simmons observes the exhibition’s impact on conversations in Chicago, and expects a similar, if not more intense, resonance in Miami.
“I know that Miami is a lightning rod for political discourse,” says Simmons. “I think that you have a great deal of divide among conservatives and liberal-minded folks. And it will challenge people’s political position,” he adds, noting the exhibition includes a banned books reading section, of which many were specifically banned by Florida.
A few weeks before the show’s opening, Simmons was in Miami painting the large-scale murals directly onto the museum walls. Recreated in each location they’re shown, the murals become a permanent part of their physical setting when they’re later painted over, underscoring Simmons’ intention with the work. “What’s interesting about the wall drawings is since they’re sort of performative, I could probably do the same drawing 10 different times and you’ll have basically 10 different drawings,” he says. “The subject matter stays the same, but the action is different.”
The murals, from his “1964” series, include “Reflection of a Future Past,” painted on a primary blue backdrop and depicting the iconic New York State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows Park. The pavilion, now abandoned, stands as a deteriorated relic of the 1964 World’s Fair. Featuring his signature blurred lines, the work reflects Simmons’ exploration of erasure and memory. Who gets remembered? Who and what is forgotten? And what traces exist even when the image isn’t fully there? In the case of the World’s Fair — which coincided with the same year the Civil Rights Act was passed — what stories get told?
In addition to several large-scale murals, the Miami exhibition showcases installation pieces, such as his 1993 piece “Lineup,” in which gold-plated basketball shoes are arranged underneath a height chart, leaving the unseen context to the imagination of the viewer. His 1994 installation “Step in the Arena,” which references a Gang Starr album, takes the form of a boxing ring, with tap shoes hung from the perimeter. The floor is a smudged painting of choreographed steps, and the pieces draw a line between boxing and the finesse of social dance.
“Surveys, it’s weird — at a certain point it’s almost like looking at an old photo book and there’s a story to tell with each piece,” he says. “Some of the pieces in [the exhibition] I haven’t seen since I made them, so they come out of the crates and I’m like, ‘wow, I haven’t seen this since way back in like ‘92.’ And it kind of blows you away. You start thinking, what was that? Where was I? Where was my studio? Where was I living?” he adds. “The art world was different, so coming up in that, you don’t really think about, wow, I wonder what’s going to happen in 30 years when I have a survey?”
Born in New York and a first-generation West Indian, Simmons came up in the art world in the aftermath of the ’80s stock market crash. That period opened doors for artists working in less commercialized forms like video and installation. “Money wasn’t really an issue, because nobody was making any money,” he says. “You could put up these challenging shows because, first of all, you were addressing the current climate that was back then, but also the fact that money had zero effect on what we were making and how we were making it. It opened the door for a lot of artists of color.”
Simmons approached each opportunity with the mindset that it might be his last — “so you tried to make your biggest, brashest, loudest statement at the time,” he says. “It wasn’t an idea of constructing a career. You were just moving from opportunity to opportunity. And then slowly but surely, it started to develop.”
Decades into his career, with blue-chip gallery representation and major institutional shows, Simmons maintains that relentless mentality. While a survey show offers a chance to reflect, his focus is on what’s still to come.
“It’s important to keep working while you’re putting together shows like this,” he says. “It’s important to keep multiple projects or work moving at the same time, so that you don’t get stuck in one place and start spinning your wheels,” he says. “I could be flying to an exhibition, but I’m already thinking about two down the line. What makes good art is challenging yourself like that and not being satisfied and keeping it moving.”
