About
It’s not just abt future it’s abt here/now 2
—Lauren Halsey
Based in South Central Los Angeles, where her family has lived for generations, Lauren Halsey creates immersive installations that bridge sculpture and architecture, and graphically maximalist collages that blend real and imagined geographies. She recontextualizes and reinterprets local vernacular sources such as flyers, murals, signs, and tags—icons of pride, autonomy, initiative, and resilience. Both celebrating Black cultural expressions and archiving them, Halsey’s work offers a form of creative resistance to the forces of gentrification. In addition to the signs and symbols of contemporary South Central, the artist employs the iconography of ancient Egypt as a means of reclaiming lost legacies. She is also inspired by the Afrofuturist aesthetics of funk music and the utopian architecture proposed in the 1960s by Archigram and Superstudio.
Born in Los Angeles in 1987, Halsey earned a BFA from California Institute of the Arts and an MFA from Yale University in 2014. In 2018, she presented we still here, there at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. A cavernous installation of cement illuminated in many bright and iridescent colored surfaces, it was filled with figurines, objects, signage, incense, and oils, acting as a historical storehouse for South Central’s material culture. The following year, Halsey’s first solo exhibition in Europe, Too Blessed 2 be Stressed! at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, featured an immersive environment of objects linking diasporic cultures from Los Angeles to Paris. In 2021, Halsey was commissioned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to produce a series of banners combining contemporary images from her neighborhood with ancient Egyptian and Nubian works from the museum’s collection.
Photo: Russell Hamilton
#LaurenHalsey
Black Futurity: Lessons in (Art) History to Forge a Path Forward
Jon Copes asks, What can Black History Month mean in the year 2024? He looks to a selection of scholars and artists for the answer.
Social Works: Lauren Halsey and Mabel O. Wilson
Lauren Halsey and Mabel O. Wilson discuss Black space and community in the context of architecture, building, and gentrification, as part of “Social Works,” a supplement guest edited by Antwaun Sargent for the Summer 2021 issue of the Quarterly.
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Art Fair
Frieze Los Angeles 2024
Social Abstraction
March 1–3, 2024, booth D13
Santa Monica Airport, California
frieze.com
Gagosian is pleased to announce its participation in Frieze Los Angeles 2024 with Social Abstraction, a diverse selection of paintings and sculptures rooted in the exploration of historic qualities of abstraction and contemporary social realities. The first in a sequence of three presentations organized by Antwaun Sargent, Social Abstraction at Frieze Los Angeles will be followed by exhibitions in Beverly Hills this summer and in Hong Kong this fall.
The intergenerational group of Black artists in Social Abstraction—Derrick Adams, Theaster Gates, Cy Gavin, Lauren Halsey, and Rick Lowe—operates beyond purely formal concerns to create artworks that move between and beyond figuration and abstraction. They push shape to become landscape, color to reveal people, and texture to map the totality of experience.
Gagosian’s booth at Frieze Los Angeles 2024. Artwork, front to back: © Lauren Halsey, © Cy Gavin, © Theaster Gates. Photo: Ed Mumford
Art Fair
ART SG 2024
January 19–21, 2024, booth BC06
Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Singapore
artsg.com
Gagosian is pleased to participate in the second edition of ART SG, with a selection of works by international contemporary artists including Harold Ancart, Georg Baselitz, Ashley Bickerton, Amoako Boafo, Dan Colen, Edmund de Waal, Nan Goldin, Lauren Halsey, Hao Liang, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Tetsuya Ishida, Alex Israel, Donald Judd, Y.Z. Kami, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Rick Lowe, Takashi Murakami, Takashi Murakami & Virgil Abloh, Nam June Paik, Ed Ruscha, Jim Shaw, Alexandria Smith, Spencer Sweeney, Stanley Whitney, Jonas Wood, and Zeng Fanzhi. The works on view, which embrace a wide variety of subjects and approaches, find artists infusing traditional genres such as history painting, portraiture, and landscape with new and surprising ideas that traverse cultural and temporal boundaries.
Gagosian’s booth at ART SG 2024. Artwork, left to right: © ADAGP, Paris, 2024, © Jonas Wood, © Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Ringo Cheung
New Representation
Lauren Halsey
Gagosian is pleased to announce the global representation of Lauren Halsey. Based in South Central Los Angeles, where her family has lived for generations, Halsey creates immersive installations that bridge sculpture and architecture, and collages that blend fantastic geographies with real ones. Her practice draws on local vernacular sources such as flyers, murals, signs, and tags—icons of pride, autonomy, initiative, and resilience that she recontextualizes and reinterprets. Both celebratory and archival, Halsey’s work offers a form of creative resistance to the forces of gentrification.
Halsey’s debut exhibition with the gallery will be held in 2024 in Europe, with her first institutional exhibition in the United Kingdom to open at Serpentine, London, in October 2024.
Photo: Russell Hamilton
Museum Exhibitions
Just Opened
Lauren Halsey in
60th Biennale di Venezia: Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners Everywhere
Through November 24, 2024
Giardini and Arsenale, Venice
www.labiennale.org
Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa for the 60th Biennale di Venezia, takes its title from a series of neon sculptures by the artist collective Claire Fontaine that depict the words “Foreigners Everywhere” in different colors and languages. The phrase comes from the Turin collective Stranieri Ovunque, which fought racism and xenophobia in Italy in the early 2000s. Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners Everywhere focuses on artists who are themselves “foreigners” and on the production of other related subjects: the queer artist, who has moved within sexualities and genders; the outsider artist, located at the margins of the art world; as well as the indigenous artist, frequently treated as a foreigner in their own land. Work by Lauren Halsey is included.
Lauren Halsey, keepers of the krown, 2024, installation view, Gaggiandre, Arsenale, 60th Biennale di Venezia, Venice © Lauren Halsey. Photo: Andrea Avezzù
On View
Multiplicity
Blackness in Contemporary American Collage
Through May 12, 2024
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
www.mfah.org
Multiplicity presents over eighty major collage and collage-informed works by fifty-two living artists. The works reflect the breadth and complexity of Black identity, exploring diverse conceptual concerns such as cultural hybridity, notions of beauty, gender fluidity, and historical memory. From paper, photographs, fabric, and salvaged or repurposed materials, these artists create unified compositions that express the endless possibilities of Black-constructed narratives within our fragmented society. This exhibition originated at the Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee. Work by Derrick Adams, Lauren Halsey, and Rick Lowe is included.
Lauren Halsey, Loda Land, 2020 © Lauren Halsey
Opening Soon
Lauren Halsey
October 4, 2024–January 5, 2025
Serpentine, London
www.serpentinegalleries.org
Lauren Halsey is the first solo exhibition of the artist’s work in the United Kingdom. Halsey’s wide-ranging practice is deeply rooted in the neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles in which her family has lived for generations. Making immersive installations and stand-alone objects, Halsey archives and remixes the changing signs and symbols populating her environment, offering a celebration of the community’s vitality and a creative form of resistance to its growing gentrification.
Lauren Halsey, land of the sunshine wherever we go II, 2021 (detail) © Lauren Halsey
Closed
Multiplicity
Blackness in Contemporary American Collage
September 15–December 31, 2023
Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee
fristartmuseum.org
Multiplicity presents over eighty major collage and collage-informed works by fifty-two living artists. The works reflect the breadth and complexity of Black identity, exploring diverse conceptual concerns such as cultural hybridity, notions of beauty, gender fluidity, and historical memory. From paper, photographs, fabric, and salvaged or repurposed materials, these artists create unified compositions that express the endless possibilities of Black-constructed narratives within our fragmented society. Work by Derrick Adams, Lauren Halsey, and Rick Lowe is included.
Rick Lowe, Black Wall Street Journey #2, 2020, installation view, Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee © Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: John Schweikert
Press
Lauren Halsey Introduces the Elite Art World to South Central LA by Jasmine Sanders
GQ
April 5, 2024
Online
PDF
Met’s Beloved Roof Garden Draws on Ancient Egypt and South Central L.A. by Holland Cotter
New York Times
April 16, 2023
Online
PDF
Lauren Halsey Brings Her Vision of South Central Los Angeles to New York by Robin Pogrebin
New York Times
May 6, 2022
Online
PDF
Artist Lauren Halsey’s latest project: bringing beautiful produce to underserved neighborhoods by Patricia Escárcega
Los Angeles Times
July 31, 2020
Online
PDF