Gary Simmons

Ghoster is one of Gary Simmons’s signature “erasure drawings,” made by applying chalk to a surface that resembles an outsized blackboard. Its smudges and blurs evoke the traces left on a blackboard after it has been wiped clean. Yet the invocation of erasure is not simply literal; Simmons ties this series of works to the way that memory functions—combining, modifying, and indeed erasing various elements from the past. His title is a blend of the words ghost and roller coaster, and the massive image of lattices and curves was inspired by various wooden roller coasters of the artist’s youth, including the Cyclone at Coney Island. Simmons’s support, occasioned in part by abandoned blackboards he found in an old schoolhouse where he kept a studio in the late 1980s, adds an additional layer of historical weight. Although typically drawn directly on the surface of a wall, the installation pictured here was made by Simmons on four wood panels to facilitate future display.

Simmons’s art, which encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video, and site-specific installation, often takes the idea of disappearance and loss as a central concern. His subjects have included bygone themes, including the historic roller coasters of Ghoster and images of ancient ships or moonshine distilleries, as well as cultural and racial stereotypes, as embodied in references to Ku Klux Klan gowns, rap songs, and blaxploitation films. “I wanted to show how we can attempt to erase a stereotype, but the image won’t easily go away,” Simmons has explained. “It persists.” The erasure drawings manifest this persistence in an affecting visual form.