Gary Simmons: Green Past Gold

Green Past Gold features new works by the artist Gary Simmons who always addresses in his practice racial, social and cultural politics. This happens as well in his “erasure drawings”, on which the artist begun to work in the late Eighties, produced through the practice of erasing as a mean to interrogate racial identity and oppression in America.

In the new works displayed, he depicts the names of African-American actors of the silver screen alongside the titles of the silent films and early ‘talking pictures’ in which they starred.While the names of the actors stand out clearly, the titles of the films almost disappear in the background in oblivion. For Simmons, the act of erasure is a reflection on black social and cultural narratives, providing a mean by which to retrace, reclaim and reconstruct African American histories.