Lauren Halsey
Lauren Halsey
Untitled, 2022
7-color screen-print on paper
36 × 24 inches (unframed)
24 ¼ × 36 ¼ × 1 ½ inches (framed)
Edition of 15, with 4 APs and 2 PPs, 1 BAT
Signed and numbered by the Artist
Printed by Tom Kracauer
Published for CalArts by Lisa Ivorian-Jones
Untitled, 2022, by artist Lauren Halsey (b. 1987, Los Angeles) is a limited edition 7-color screenprint which belongs to Halsey's series of digital collage works, which she refers to as “fantastical cartographies”; maps that reflect the lives of the people and places around her. In the words of Halsey, “I want to compel dreaming, new aspirations, proposals for the future. I’m interested in making gorgeous black space for Black people—what I hope to be future spaces that are actually functional in a neighborhood as habitats. Not just representations of architectures as maquettes in an art gallery or museum, but the everyday experience of living with it and in it.”
Directly anchored and underpinned by Halsey’s beloved home of South Central Los Angeles, the dazzling composition of Untitled, 2022 is infused with bright psychedelic neon green, and takes inspiration from the music collective, Parliament-Funkadelic. Collaged and rendered in the artist’s inescapably unique vocabulary and style, the print incorporates ancient and contemporary symbols, Egyptian culture, Afrofuturist references and contemporary posters, amongst other brilliantly interwoven elements. In a recent profile for the New York Times, Halsey aptly states, “I’m an obsessive collector of objects, of images — scanning the streets,” she added. “I’ve been collecting as long as I could breathe.”
In Spring 2023 Halsey introduced a newly commissioned site-specific installation for the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden to great critical acclaim. Halsey was awarded Seattle Art Museum’s 2021 Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Prize and was the subject of a solo exhibition at the museum in 2022. She has also presented solo exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2021); David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles (2020); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2019); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2018). Halsey participated in Made in L.A. 2018, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, where she was awarded the Mohn Award for artistic excellence. Her work is in the collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2020, Halsey founded Summaeverythang Community Center and is currently in the process of developing a major public monument for construction in South Central Los Angeles. Her work will be the subject of a catalogue published by David Kordansky Gallery in 2022. Halsey lives and works in Los Angeles.