Curator, Roxana Marcoci: Gary Simmons’ monumental boom! features an exploding cloud that instantly evokes war imagery. A related series of drawings was inspired by an automatic weapon called the Tec-Nine.
For Simmons, this image also recalls cartoon fights in which two figures clash before being completely obscured by clouds, stars, and flying debris. Fascinated by the way violence entertains people -- particularly children-- he sees cartoons as the earliest form of getting pleasure from an act of violence. That concept, he feels, makes boom! an important piece.
The study for this work is called Boombastic, a title borrowed from a popular song with a heavy bass sound characteristic of reggae and hip-hop. Indeed, _boom!_’s associations with the explosive energy of street culture provide another way to see it -- as a celebration of black music and empowerment.
Simmons spends as much time erasing his chalkboard works as he does drawing them. Their smeared marks are concrete evidence of his physical labor. After completing a meticulous drawing, he “attacks” it with his hands clad in thin golf gloves. The gloves allow him to feel the surface of the drawing and gauge the amount of pressure needed to partially obscure and blur the image.