ART CITIES:Los Angeles-Sam Durant

Growing up near Boston in the 1970s Sam Durant experienced the radical pedagogy of A.S. Neill, Maria Montessori, and John Holt, along with anti-war demonstrations and the desegregation of the public-school system. Exposure to an educational culture emphasizing democratic ideals, racial equality, and social justice created the framework for Durant’s artistic perspective.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Blum & Poe Gallery Archive

For over two decades, Sam Durant has been engaged in an ongoing dialogue with tumultuous and forgotten events of the past, shining a light on these histories to reveal their resonance with broader social, political, and cultural issues. For his solo exhibition “Iconoclasm” in a new series of graphite works drawn from archival documentation, Durant depicts the intentional and often violent destruction of public monuments. Produced in 2018, this body of work was first exhibited last year at Library Street Collective in Detroit, and is being shown in October 2020 in Los Angeles at a time when monument-removal has become a divisive political debate issue in the lead up to the US General Election. A new electric sign by the artist commemorates the occasion. The six drawings that compose the exhibition are accompanied by a new two-channel video work made from archival footage of public statues being torn down. Durant slows the speed for a protracted, quiet fall that allows for a reflective experience in processing the wreckage of public symbols. Both the drawings and the video illustrate a wide-ranging arc of monument destruction across nations, cultures, and time periods. Both in and out of their original context, the monuments speak to the specific time and place from which they came, while standing equally as appropriate and applicable to the contemporary situation in which they are exhibited. They speak widely to recurrence and re-occurrence of moments of struggle and resistance in history. Sam Durant’s interest in monuments and memorials began with “Proposal for Monument at Altamont Raceway, Tracy, CA” (1999), referencing the vicious end to the infamous free concert and arguably, the end to an era of upheaval; it continued notably with “Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions” (2005), re-contextualizing memorials to victims of the conquest of North America; and more recently with “Proposal for Public Founta”in (2015), a marble work depicting an anarchist statue being blasted by a police water-canon. In 2017, what has become Durant’s most controversial public sculpture, “Scaffold” (2012), was itself protested and ceremonially buried by members of the Dakota people from its installation at the Minnesota Sculpture Garden at Walker Arts Center. Made in the wake of the artist’s personal experience of removal of his public sculpture, the “Iconoclasm” body of work develops the artist’s, as well as our own, understanding of the power of symbols.

Info: Blum & Poe Gallery, 2727 S. La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, Duration: 1/10-7/11/2020, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00 (by appointment only), www.blumandpoe.com