As Lorna Simpson started to assemble works she’d created over the past year or so, she thought she’d use the exhibition title to head off all of those “what’s this about?” questions.
That’s certainly the case in “Everrrything,” a show at Hauser & Wirth that employs a mix of found photographs, screenprints, paintings, video and sculpture to tackle matters of race, gender and identity—a recurring thread for Simpson, who’s toyed with the trustworthiness of the assumed narratives in art since her work in conceptual photography in the ’80s.
The mood, as you might expect, isn’t always cheery. Dark, muted portraits balance against the wall in one gallery, while in another only the climate-change–ravaged environs of the Arctic, with Black faces smeared into icebergs, can seemingly portray the bleakness of our current time.
But there’s also pure aesthetic beauty to be found here, particularly in the opening display of collages, where the bodies of Ebony and Jet centerfold models have been carved out and filled with a celestial skeleton of woodblock constellation prints from the 1800s, both layered atop vibrant indigo-dyed paper.
Before you enter the galleries, you’ll pass by stacks of stones outdoors topped with obsidian singing bowls, a sort of stand-in for the types of small, safe gatherings we’ve become accustomed to over the past year and a half. Don’t be afraid to rub a provided mallet around the rim; the bowls sound particularly resonant in the Arts District couryard.
