This presentation of work by New York–based artist Lorna Simpson is the first exhibition to consider the entirety of her painting practice to date. Simpson came to prominence in the early 1990s with her pioneering approach to conceptual photography. Since then, she has produced works in multiple media that continue to probe the nature of images and how they construct meaning. Lorna Simpson: Source Notes focuses on a significant new development in her work of the last 10 years: paintings that advance her incisive explorations of gender, race, identity, representation, and history. Through more than 30 works, this focused exhibition presents a selection of Simpson’s major paintings, including examples from her acclaimed Venice Biennale debut in 2015 and her celebrated series Special Characters, along with recent sculptures and related collages.
Throughout Simpson’s expansive practice, she has often sourced imagery and drawn inspiration from vintage Ebony and Jet magazines (icons of culture in contemporary America), as well as the archives of the Associated Press and Library of Congress. Simpson incorporates her findings into screen-printed collages with washes of ink and acrylic on fiberglass, wood, or clayboard. These works dynamically collide figuration and abstraction with bodies that emerge and disappear, peering from inky surfaces or dissolving into landscapes of melting ice. They use found images—the artist’s “source notes”—to generate visual power, exemplifying Simpson’s skillful blurring of genres.
The exhibition is made possible by the Ford Foundation.
Additional support is provided by Hauser & Wirth, Jim and Irene Karp, The Deborah Buck Foundation, and John and Amy Griffin.
The catalogue is made possible by the Mellon Foundation and Allison and Larry Berg.