Opening 30th September 2023, the US artist Lorna Simpson will exhibit new work in Zurich from her ongoing Special Character series, marking Simpson’s first solo exhibition with Hauser & Wirth in Switzerland.
First unveiled in 2019, her Special Character series superimposes women’s faces from fashion and wig ads found in the pages of Ebony magazine, revealing through repetition the reinforcement of stereotypes in the everyday imagery we consume. In these works, silkscreened images of isolated figures emerge from layered washes of paint, highlighting Simpson’s continual investigation of the relationship between parts and wholes and the nature of representation, identity, gender and race. By repurposing and reconfiguring found images—a signature source in her work—Simpson creates her own highly distinctive visual terrain that offers a potent response to American life today.
Lorna Simpson, 30th September – 23rd December 2023, Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Limmatstrasse
About the artist
Lorna Simpson gained prominence in the 1980s for her groundbreaking conceptual photography. Her early artistry, notably her bold fusion of text and staged imagery, sparked inquiries into representation, identity, gender, race, and history. These driving forces persist in her multidisciplinary art today. Simpson adeptly navigates photography’s tie to memory and history, central to her work.
During the mid-1980s on the West Coast, Simpson belonged to a cohort of artists who used conceptual methods to challenge language and image credibility. Her iconic pieces from this era portray African-American figures solely from behind or in fragments. Captured in a neutral studio setting, these figures lack specific spatiotemporal ties. Inspired by poetry and literature, the artist supplements these visuals with her fragmented text, sometimes hinting at violence or trauma. These potent works weave viewers into a web of ambiguous meaning, where the unsaid holds equal weight to the disclosed. Deceptively simple, these pieces are intricate enigmas, as intricate as their themes.
Over three decades, Simpson has persisted in exploring these themes while broadening her repertoire to include film, video, painting, drawing, and sculpture. Recent creations incorporate imagery from vintage Jet and Ebony magazines, discarded photo booth photos, and abandoned Associated Press pictures of natural elements—especially ice, symbolized by glass “ice” blocks in her sculptures. These new pieces immerse viewers in layers of captivating paradoxes, weaving figuration and abstraction, past and present, destruction and creation, male and female. Complex and layered, Simpson’s artistry employs metaphor, metonymy, and formal excellence to provide a potent commentary on contemporary American life.
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