Sean Kelly Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Lorna Simpson. This will be Simpson's third exhibition with the gallery and her first in our new space.
Simpson's exhibition is comprised of a new single channel video projection and new photographic works. The projection consists of fifteen mouths humming the Rogers and Hart tune Easy To Remember, creating a haunting and at times disjointed version of this well known composition. Simpson chose the tune specifically as she has vivid memories of John Coltrane's version of the song being present throughout her childhood. The new photographic pieces are large Plexiglas panels inset with numerous black and white contact prints. The photographs are arranged serially, as if mimicking storyboards for an imagined cinematic project. Indeed, taken en masse, they could be viewed cumulatively as a non-narrative proposal for an imaginary film project. The texts, accompanying the photographs, appear to refer to an interior monologue associated with the sitter, at the same time they seem to allude to modes of photographic portraiture and it's presentation. Individually the photo works are powerful new pieces, that demonstrate clear thematic links with several earlier bodies of work which Simpson has produced in the two decades of her influential career thus far.
In the fall of 2002 The Whitney Museum of American Art and The Studio Museum in Harlem are collaborating on a Simpson exhibition that will tour in America and Europe. Also in 2002 Phaidon will publish a substantial monograph with essays by Thelma Golden, Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Chrissie Iles, Curator of Film and Video at The Whitney Museum of American Art, and Kellie Jones, Yale University Assistant Professor.
This year Simpson was commissioned to design The Whitney Museum American Art Award sponsored by Cartier and the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art. Scenarios: Recent Work by Lorna Simpson traveled to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN and the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI.
Simpson was included in several group exhibitions in 2001 and 2000 including: A Way With Words: Selections from the Whitney Museum of American Art, Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York, NY; InSite2000, San Diego, CA; and I'm Thinking of a Place, UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA. In 1999 Simpson's work was included in: Open Ends: Actual Size, The Museum of Modern Art, NY; and The 46th Biennial Exhibition Media/Metaphor, The Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, DC. Simpson was a Sceenwriter's Lab Fellow at The Sundance Institute in 1998 and is currently working on her first full-length film script.
Lorna Simpson was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1960. She received an M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego in 1985, and a B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 1982. Simpson has exhibited widely in both museums and galleries worldwide, her works are included in the collections of many prominent museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, to name but a few.
