Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making

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_boom_

Gary Simmons. boom. 1996/2003

White pigment and pastel on blackboard-paint primed panel, Image: 125 1/8 x 208 7/8" (317.8 x 530.5 cm). Gift of the Friends of Contemporary Drawing and of The Friends of Education of The Museum of Modern Art. © 2018 Gary Simmons

Roxana Marcoci: 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.