The theme of this year’s Culture Lab Detroit (CLD), a two-day series of discussions, dinners, and public projects set to open on September 15, is “Walls”—architectural structures, ontological boundaries, and so on. In the case of artist Gary Simmons, who will inaugurate this year’s program, walls serve as substrate.Channeling the city’s rich history of Motown, punk, dub, and techno music, Simmons will cover the walls of a historic Detroit space with self-created musical flypaper posters. Vibrant and evocative of the Detroit’s famed DIY art subcultures and chip-on-its-shoulder disposition, the public installation also hint at the larger economic, racial, and sociopolitical issues that have pervaded the once-great American city for the last quarter of a century. Simmons’s project marks the first major collaboration between CLD and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD).Simmons has presented this project before — at the Baldwin Gallery in Aspen, the Simon Lee Gallery in London, and, most recently, at Anthony Meier Fine Arts in San Francisco. However, whereas in the past he has collected and altered existing posters and flyers, for the Detroit iteration, the artist has created a new set of 13 posters that reference specific music from the city, such as Motown acts and the MC5. It will also be the largest version of the project, and the first to be exhibited publicly — an important new aspect, given the themes the project is exploring.Simmons has exhibited internationally, and has work in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art LA, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Whitney Museum in New York. Last year, he was featured in the 56th International “All the World’s Futures” exhibition organized by the Venice Biennale.In addition to Simmons’s project, this year’s Culture Lab Detroit will feature public conversations with artists Trevor Paglen, Adam Pendleton, and Glenn Kaino, as well as Elizabeth Diller, a founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro; Franklin Sirmans, the director of the Pérez Art Museum in Miami; and Eva Franch i Gilabert, the director of Storefront for Art and Architecture.
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