And escape it was, into the MET and another maze thru most of museum, this time filled with a huge number of people. Fortunately, fewer were interested in Lorna Simpson or the African and Indonesian art exhibits. As a result, I felt like I had wide open space all to myself. Another immersive walk, this time into color, shape, memory and history.
Lorna Simpson: Source Notes focused on a new development in her work of the last 10 years: paintings that advance her incisive explorations of gender, race, identity, representation, and history. This is the first exhibition to consider the entirety of her painting practice to date. Similar to Mickalene Thomas, whose work I saw at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia last year, Lorna’s “source imagery” and inspiration came from vintage Ebony and Jet magazines and incorporated them into screen-printed collages with washes of color – ink and acrylics – onto various surfaces. fiberglass, wood, or Claybord.
Originally a photographer, she has mixed and melded her creative expression and genres.
Ice
Apparently, she transitioned from photography to painting icy landscapes, “new territory for an artist who has focused on socio-political commentaries for much of her career” and started exploring it as a metaphor in 2018.
“Simpson compares these icy, inhospitable terrains to the current culture in America, which is still rife with discrimination, and segregation. Some of her landscape paintings also feature ghostly, African-American women’s faces dissolving into her indistinct, mountainous blurs, emphasizing the hidden issues of racism that still haunt the American dream.”
“Known predominantly as a photographer, painting is a radical new development in Simpson’s practice, one which was not without its risks, as she explains, “At first I was a little intimidated about working in this way,” she commented, adding, “It seemed a little absurd … and then I thought … you fail, you fail. So what?”
No failure here.
Source: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/simpson-lorna/
