黑料不打烊

Gagosian is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Lauren Halsey. The installation is composed of protruded engravings and a large-scale plaza sign sculpture鈥攈onoring the aesthetics of her home community in South Central Los Angeles and the diasporic, mythological features of Black life in the United States.

The six-foot-tall sculpture from the plaza sign series (2024鈥�) pays homage to the iconography, color palettes, and creative wordplay commonly found on Black- and Brown-owned business signage in working-class neighborhoods. Whereas signs like 鈥淲atts Happening鈥� are tributes to artist- and community-run cultural centers, others like 鈥淒reams and Things鈥� and 鈥淪isters Serving the Community鈥� are a call to action and a reminder of the historic and current roles that community members and institutions play in stewarding Black and Brown neighborhoods amid conditions of economic inequality, systemic racism, state violence, gentrification, and displacement.

The monochrome sculptural reliefs in the protruded engravings series (2022鈥�), on the other hand, assemble a historical, contemporary, and mythical graphic record of Black culture in Los Angeles. Like the cosmological carvings of ancient Egypt and Mesoamerican civilizations, Halsey鈥檚 engravings appear almost hieroglyphic, transforming South Central residents, institutions, and everyday moments into ciphers that illuminate alternative constructions of the past, present, and future. She places their expressive cultures and community designs into a dynamic exchange with Afro-diasporic mythologies, Funk music and aesthetics, personal memory, and collective history.