RETROACTION
RETROaction presents works by Charles Gaines, Lorna Simpson and Gary Simmons, who all participated in the original The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism, as well as a new iteration, subtitled Black Art and Reconstitution, presenting the work of ten artists.
February 27 – May 5, 2024
In the early 1990s a generation of artists in the United States were using exhibitions to draw attention to real-world crises: by the time Bill Clinton was inaugurated in January 1993, AIDS was officially the #1 cause of death for men aged 25 – 44 in the country; the Los Angeles uprising had been declared the most destructive period of local unrest in US history; and the Culture Wars were in full force, after the Robert Mapplethorpe ‘obscenity’ hearing marked the nation’s first criminal trial over content in an exhibition.
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of ‘The Theater of Refusal, developed by Charles Gaines for the University Art Gallery at the University of California, Irvine, in close collaboration with the gallery’s director, Catherine Lord. Presenting works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Renée Green, David Hammons, Ben Patterson, Adrian Piper, Sandra Rowe, Gary Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, Pat Ward Williams and Fred Wilson this exhibition in downtown LA looks back at that seminal project and continues the theoretical investigation to understand its resonances today. Co-curator Homi K. Bhabha has called this process ‘retroaction.’
RETROaction is a project initiated at Hauser & Wirth with the prominent Harvard academic, Homi K. Bhabha, to explore the ‘nowness’ of art and critical concepts from the recent past in dialogue with artists who work with the gallery: it posits that our current time is one for retroaction more than retrospection. The first iteration of the project created a smaller presentation of the ‘The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Reconstitution’ and also explored the Whitney Biennial in 1993—a show that has subsequently been recognized as establishing many terms that underpin our current cultural debates. Artists included: Ida Applebroog, Charles Gaines, Mike Kelley, Zoe Leonard, Glenn Ligon, Cindy Sherman, Gary Simmons and Lorna Simpson with Kevin Beasley, Torkwase Dyson, Leslie Hewitt and Rashid Johnson.
Homi K. Bhabha is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities in the English Department and Comparative Literature Department at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous works exploring postcolonial theory, cultural change and power, contemporary art and cosmopolitanism. His works include ‘The Location of Culture,’ which was reprinted as a Routledge Classic, and the edited volume ‘Nation and Narration.’
Charles Gaines is a pivotal figure in the field of conceptual art. His body of work engages formulas and systems that interrogate relationships between the objective and the subjective realms. The concept of identity politics has played a central role within Gaines’ oeuvre, and the radical approach he employs addresses issues of race in ways that transcend the limits of representation.