Text by Thelma Golden, Maurice Berger. Interview by Franklin Sirmans.

 From his child-sized Klan robes and rows of empty gilded sneakers to his recent photographs of uninhabited pedagogical spaces, Gary Simmons’s work contains and invokes an absence as palpable and fraught with meaning as any presence. His best known work, expansive erasure drawings containing imagery addressing issues pertaining to race, pedagogy, and culture, are sketched on blackboards and walls and then rubbed and smudged by the artist’s own hands. A widely acclaimed young artist who came to prominence in the late 80s, Simmons’s work in drawing and sculpture deals extensively with black identity and with imagery inspired by American popular culture, from cartoons to vernacular architecture. This catalog, the first published on the artist’s work, focuses on Simmons’ work since the mid-1990s.