CSU Dominguez Hills University Art Gallery Presents an Exhibition of Work by Lauren Halsey
March 03, 2022
By Devyn Bakewell
Staff Writer
The University Art Gallery at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) proudly presents a solo exhibition of work by the Los Angeles-based artist Lauren Halsey.
The artist’s latest venture in funkified placemaking, this exhibition extends Halsey's architectural mappings, materializing itself in objects, names, remembrances, and colors of home. Red, black, and green (the colors of the Pan-African flag) sit parallel with orange, yellow, pink, and blue hyper pigments (the colors of South Central).
Together, this spectrum etches out decelerations, provocations, the naming of the dead, and the aesthetic genius of Black people. These objects float in the mirrored floor and aluminum-draped foregrounds, orienting themselves as structures simultaneously taking off and landing.
Lauren Halsey, a Los Angeles native born in 1937, is rethinking the possibilities for art, architecture, and community engagement. She produces both standalone artworks and site-specific projects, particularly in the South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles where her family has lived for several generations. Combining found, fabricated, and handmade objects, Halsey’s work maintains a sense of civic urgency and free-flowing imagination, reflecting the lives of the people and places around her and addressing the crucial issues confronting people of color, queer populations, and the working class.
Halsey’s work insists upon what Douglas Kerney names the "Here/Now" and the "There/Then," a quintessential act that guides and grounds her practice. Halsey's call towards edifice, which builds upon Black people's current presence and future here in Los Angeles, is presented alongside those and that which no longer exist in the flesh; Black people, business, signage, and places that have ceased in their original material forms.
It is in the monumental where people will find themselves with Halsey’s work, a claim that bends time and memory in its insistence as a place for now.
The exhibit will last from March 5 through December 10. The public opening reception is Saturday, March 5 from 12 to 6 pm.
“Lauren Halsey” is generously supported by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pasadena Art Alliance. The University Art Gallery on the CSUDH campus, 1000 E. Victoria Street in Carson, is free and open to the public Monday-Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visit csudh.edu/visit-us for directions and a printable campus map. Daily permits in campus lots are $9 and sold at yellow kiosks in the lots.
In accordance with university guidelines, all visitors must show proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Those with exemptions may instead present a negative COVID-19 PCR test taken within the previous 48 hours. A valid photo ID is also required. Masks are required for all visitors inside the gallery.