Ellen Gallagher: Preserve

Organized by Jeff Fleming, curator at the Des Moines Art Center, Preserve was the first solo museum exhibition devoted to Ellen Gallagher's work. The show featured her newest projects: a series of mixed-media drawings taken from advertisements in mid-century black culture magazines, and a three-dimensional jungle gym construction, Gallagher's first sculptural project. First on display at the Des Moines Art Center, the show was also on view at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Gallagher used stereotypical images of black culture and multiplied them by thousands to transform each element into a distant abstract sign, confronting issues of racialized identity and its social consequences. In this way, what appeared to be a traditional use of minimalist abstraction upon closer inspection drew the viewer into a dialogue with potent historical symbols.

The drawings in Preserve originated as advertisements for wigs taken from black photo magazines, such as Ebony, Our World, and Black Stars, published between the 1950s and the 1970s. Gallagher used coconut oil, paint, plasticine, ink, and tape, to perform mutations on the advertisements—literally defacing the models in the process—and frequently typed in texts from accompanying articles reflecting the socio-political spirit of the era. She used the jungle gym, a site with no winners or losers, as a metaphor for an ideal future.