Todd Gray Presents Solo Show at PCMA

Todd Gray, Euclidean Gris Gris (Gifty/Versailles), 2019, three archival pigment prints in artist’s frames, 48 5/8 x 41 x 3 5/8 in. Courtesy of the artist, David Lewis, New York, and Meliksetian | Briggs

Contemporary artist Todd Gray’s (Art BFA 79, MFA 89) solo exhibition Euclidean Gris Gris runs from Sept. 3, 2019 to May 17, 2020, at the Pomona College Museum of Art (PCMA) in Claremont, Calif.

Euclidean Gris Gris is a large-scale survey of Gray’s latest sculptural photographic works, derived from the artist’s exploration of colonialism in Africa and Europe. Gray’s work delves into the disparity with which African landscapes and European gardens have historically been perceived, manifesting in images that defy the binaries of nature and culture. 

“I wanted to make the viewer conscious of how they are active players in constructing meaning. We tend to think of the veracity of photography, and that it does not lie,” said Gray of his exhibition works. “I wanted to shift that and bring attention to the frame, to ask what’s outside of this frame? Because this other frame is covering something up. Then, you are given the task to reconstruct and bring in your narrative, your history, your understanding of what you’re looking at, and then, to name and create a narrative.”

The exhibition is part of an artist residency realized by Gray’s recent grant from the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. Euclidean Gris Gris will occupy the PCMA’s gallery for the entire 2019-2020 academic year. In addition to the exhibition, Gray has developed Longing on a Large Scale, a public program series curated by scholar, writer and educator Dr. Nana Adusei-Poku. The exhibition is also accompanied by a publication including essays by Adusei-Poku and Dr. Neelika Jayawardane, an associate professor of English at the State University of New York-Oswego. Gray will hold a conversation about the exhibition with Adusei-Poku at the opening reception on Saturday, Sept. 14.

Gray is a Los Angeles- and Ghana-based artist with a catalog of photography, performance, installation and sculpture works. He is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including a John Simon Gunggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts, a city of Los Angeles Individual Artist Grant, a Pasadena Art Alliance Grant and an Artists’ Resource for Completion Grant from the Durfee Foundation.

Gray’s works hang in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Canada, and the Studio Museum in Harlem University of Parma, Italy.