Since the late 1980s, Gary Simmons has been internationally recognized for using erasure as both a material and a conceptual focus. Widely noted for his unconventional use of the blackboard, Simmons brings it into the exhibition space as a kind of ready-made, drawing with chalk and partially erasing it by hand. Born in 1964 in New York and of West Indian descent, he draws on popular culture—cartoons, celebrities, and cinem, to expose systems of racial and social oppression.

By higlighting how narratives are built—and what is omitted—Simmons offers a renewed reading of history, a liberated vision of the future, and a rejection of imposed identities. His aim is not to correct history, but to reveal its absences—to make space for other narratives, other futures, other memories.

The exhibition builds on Simmons’ longstanding exploration of memory, visibility, and historical omission, using his signature technique of partially erasing hand-drawn images and text to create ghostly, residual forms. Transforming the main gallery into a vast blackboard, Simmons immerses visitors in an environment that surrounds them like a cinema. In Rush, Simmons advances this strategy across large-scale wall drawings colored in sepia for the first time, as well as paintings, a wheatpaste poster installation on the building’s facade, and a participatory reading room.

Referring to the Colorado River as a corridor to the West, he engages with a deeply embedded trope in American history and imagination: Manifest Destiny and the westward expansion of pioneers. The title of the exhibition, Rush, echoes one of Simmons’s key references, Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, and reflects how American mythology has long nurtured ideals of urgency, hope, success, and territorial expansion. It also alludes to the brushstrokes characteristic of Simmons’s work: the rush to erase chalk from blackboards, and metaphorically, to erase histories from collective memory.

By exposing how narratives are constructed, and what is omitted, Simmons offers a renewed reading of history, a liberated vision of the future, and a rejection of imposed identities and invisibility. He turns the viewer into an active participant: the aim is not to correct history, but to reveal its absences—to make space for other narratives, other futures, other memories.