GARY SIMMONS
Culture Lab Detroit and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) are pleased to present a public work by Gary Simmons. The project was made possible with generous support from Bedrock. Gary Simmons’ installation inaugurates Culture Lab 2016, a two-day series of discussions, dinners, and public projects centering around different approach to walls—architectural or ideological boundaries which both define cultural practice and limit understandings of art, architecture, and other cultural undertakings.
PAST EXHIBITIONS
GARY SIMMONS
SEPTEMBER 15, 2016 – JANUARY 1, 2017
Culture Lab Detroit and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) are pleased to present a public work by Gary Simmons. The project was made possible with generous support from Bedrock.
For his first public project in Detroit, Simmons has created an immersive, environmental installation by wallpapering the the space with self-created musical fly posters that reference specific musical styles, as well as their attendant subcultures and sociopolitical connotations. This work indelibly refers to the guerilla technique of wheat-pasting posters to fences, facades, doorways, and other makeshift surfaces, effectively turning an urban landscape into a medium for cultural dissemination.
The aesthetic effect is one of urgency and intervention, and as a result, fly-poster graphics have long been integral to a given musical subculture. By replicating this imagery within the confines of the gallery, altering it in color and composition while allowing the main graphic thrust of the imagery to remain, Simmons presents once-slighted or disenfranchised ephemera as vital contributions to culture at large.
Gary Simmons’ installation inaugurates Culture Lab 2016, a two-day series of discussions, dinners, and public projects centering around different approach to walls—architectural or ideological boundaries which both define cultural practice and limit understandings of art, architecture, and other cultural undertakings.
