UNFINISHED HISTORY

The Future of Past Representation

Fade to Black is not finished. At least, not yet. Artist Gary Simmons’ large, multi-paneled painting generously installed on the five largest interior walls of the California African American Museum’s (CAAM) spacious lobby is a poignant rumination on African American identity, as viewed and understood through the lens of cinematic (mis)representation writ large. Oversized text, stylized in the font of an old typewriter, ca. 1920s, crowds a field of dark slate. Accumulating and eventually looming over the viewer, these words and phrases seem somewhat random and cryptic at first glance. (The museum’s brochure helpfully provides a key to understanding when it states that the texts reference “the titles of several early 20th-century silent race films.”) Significantly, the entire piece may be initially mistaken for clever wallpaper as visitors swiftly walk past in search of art in one of the museum’s designated galleries. Dismissed. Overlooked. A strange irony for a piece that engages with the notion of identity, erasure and the blurring of boundaries and lines.

In both its larger-than-life size as well as its geographical orientation, Simmons’ piece seems to be in a direct, if somewhat oblique, conversation with one of its closest neighbors: The towering IMAX screen at the California Science Center (CSC). Simmons has created a large cinematic screen of his own, attempting, perhaps, to counter the screen of his perceived other. The IMAX screen at CSC is an unabashed tool of institutional education. In Fade to Black, Simmons has certainly created his own institutional education tool. The distinct colors of dark slate and stark white that the artist has selected as the most obvious elements in the work inevitably evokes associations with generations of education in countless classrooms across the U.S.

A distinct difference here is that the letters inscribed on Simmons’ chalkboard are smeared in a way that only wet paint, not chalk, may be smeared. This is just one of the ways in which the artist subverts the viewers expectations and assumptions. When creating the piece, the artist used his hands to smear the letters, but, significantly, he also used an actual chalkboard eraser. Performative gestures like this, hiding in plain site, form an important element in the work’s creation, existence and final status.

The use of readymades certainly figures prominently in the artist’s body of work. Memories of the Black Ark 1 (2016) and That’s Just the Way That I Talk Yo (2005) both rely on found objects and readymade materials. Fade to Black might also be understood as depending heavily on Duchamp’s notions of the readymade in the way that it boldly conscripts existing materials into its service. Not least of which is the museum itself. Gary Simmons’ piece is not merely the thin layer of paint that the artist has applied, but also the surface on which he has applied it, and, by extension, the entire architectural structure that those surfaces are an integral part of. In the gesture of applying paint to the surface of the walls of the CAAM lobby, Simmons has transformed the lobby itself into his own large readymade sculptural object.

In addition to incorporating readymades, Simmons’ work also frequently engages with, and features, text. Often the use of words has a nostalgic element as seen in Hollywood (2008). The artist appears to be using text as a tool to evoke associations with the past and to explore notions of understanding, location, learning and memory. The urgent, vertical smearing of the text in Fade to Black suggests an almost manic desire to remove or obscure the meaning, and, by extension, the memory and impact, of the words.

Given the immediate context of Exposition Park and the museum lobby, as well as the consequent fact that the work enjoys a celebrated, institutionally sanctioned position of endorsement by an authoritative body like CAAM, one can’t help but think of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and the infamous notion of the large barn wall with its text based instructions serving as a source of both meaning and memory to the population it governs. (When white paint is used to gradually, covertly modify the instructions written on the barn wall, the animals simply blame their faulty memory and accept the changes as if there were no changes at all.)

Interestingly, and in keeping with the cinematic theme of Fade to Black, the vertical direction of the paint smears also vividly parallels the visual effect produced on motion picture film titles when the film in the projector comes off the track due to a broken sprocket hole or a bad splice. This violent disruption in the viewer’s otherwise seamless and comfortable experience seems to be at the heart of Simmons’ intention.

Though the signature smearing technique present in Fade to Black has been used by Simmons elsewhere in similar cinematically themed pieces like Credit Roll (2010) and Balcony Seating Only (2017), there is no question that the iteration of Fade to Black that exists at CAAM is absolutely site specific in the sense that it is specific to the site in the way that its size and shape precisely matches the five walls of the museum lobby on which it is installed. In addition, the fact that the installation is permanent, to the degree that the piece is painted directly onto the surface of the building’s walls, adds to its site specificity. The work, in its original form at CAAM, did not exist, except perhaps conceptually in the artist’s mind, prior to its actual creation on site. It was not sitting off site, already made, waiting to be brought to and installed at the museum. Additionally, having been installed, it cannot be taken down and relocated without significantly altering the building’s structure by removing the materials that currently compose the walls of the museum’s lobby. Barring the most extraordinary feat of engineering and preservation, the piece cannot physically exist elsewhere.

Though the piece could certainly be relevant elsewhere, it is situated specifically at the California African American Museum, in South Central Los Angeles, steps way from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and not far from historic African American neighborhoods with storied pasts. The themes of Fade to Black are relevant wherever the African American experience exists and, in that sense, if it were possible to remove and reinstall the piece in other locations, the piece might possibly become specific to those new sites.

However, those sites could not claim what only the original site at CAAM may claim, which is that the piece was commissioned for this specific location and that the artist himself brought the piece into being as he created and “installed” it on site at the location itself at a specific time in the site’s history. No other location in the known universe may lay claim to such a degree of site specificities. Last of all is the great likelihood that the piece will not actually be removed at all, but will instead be covered over with paint to create a clean slate for subsequent exhibitions at the museum. In this way, though no longer visible, the piece remains physically present so long as the building and its walls remain standing. The fact of site location permanence only adds to its robust site specificity.

This invisible permanence may actually be the ultimate meaning of Fade to Black. Not unlike the many individuals and identities that the piece references: African Americans who were seen but not heard, present but unacknowledged, yet who’s contribution was to form a forgotten, obscured foundation upon which later generations could stand and offer new representations of African American identity. Would a role like that played by Lupita Nyong’o in 12 Years a Slave exist if not for Hattie McDaniel’s role in Gone With the Wind? Both actresses won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, but likely for very different reasons. Like these two women, Fade to Black challenges and complicates our understanding of identity and representation in the way that it embodies and performs the very thing it confronts.

This is why Fade to Black will not be fully completed until it is uninstalled when the exhibition ends on July 18, 2018. Only then will Simmons full gesture and meaning be realized. The completion of Fade to Black hinges on the manner in which the piece ends it’s tenure at CAAM. (If such a word as “end” may even be used in this case.) As the last day of the exhibition swiftly approaches, what is actually going to happen to Fade to Black? Will it reach fruition and do what it has promised all along? Will it indeed fade to black? Or will it simply be whitewashed instead?

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