The dark, slightly indistinct works featured in Midnight Matinee, artist Gary Simmons' current exhibit at Metro Pictures, show "images of drive-in theater marquees and infamous houses from vintage horror films to reflect on ghosts and abandoned pasts," (from the show's press release). New York native Simmons often references pop culture in his work to "address personal and collective memories of race and class." The works on view, mainly composed of pigment, oil paint, and cold wax on canvas, present haunting images of the houses featured in such horror classics as Amityville Horror, Psycho, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well as views of defunct and equally haunted-looking drive-ins.
Aiding to the ghostly quality of Simmons' Midnight Matinee works is the black-on-black color scheme he uses along with his trademark "erasure" technique. Early in his career, Simmons created works "in white chalk on readymade chalkboards or directly onto slate-painted walls that he partially expunges and erases by smudging the images with his hands." More recently, the artist switched to using canvas, pigment, oil paint, and cold wax, though the centerpiece of the show is Split Personality, a large-scale wall drawing "scaled to the proportions of a movie screen," featuring the creepy house from Psycho. The image is "split horizontally and inverted as if flickering between frames," so the roof of the house is seen at the bottom of the "screen" while the bottom half of the architecture hovers above it as if the filmstrip is skipping.
Simmons' Midnight Matinee offers images that are as mysterious, foreboding, and eerie as the films they reference. Learn more at metropicturesgallery.com and read a statement Simmons made in 1999 regarding his Chalkboard Series at moma.org. Through March 20th.
Bonham Theater, 2010
Starlite Theater, 2010
Between Offerings, 2010
Split Personality, 2010
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