Todd Gray: Church and State

Over the past decade, the work of Los Angeles-based artist Todd Gray (b. 1954) has steadily grown more ambitious in scale, form, and content. His complex photographic assemblages mix images of historic European cultural sites of wealth and splendor (palaces, museums, churches) and locales associated with the slave trade along the West Coast of Africa; these are interspersed with photographs of African American cultural icons, all drawn from Gray's archive. The results are tone poems that reflect on African American identity and the rise of Western civilization as both are undergirded by and inextricably linked to colonialism. Presented at The Brick this fall, Todd Gray: Church and State will include three works, including two new mural-scale pieces. Distinguishing this exhibition from recent presentations of Gray's work will be a significant collection of biographical material. These images and related ephemera document the trajectory of Gray's personal and professional life as a young Black man growing up in post-war Los Angeles. That includes his career as a commercial photographer and his life as an artist, practices that generated two bodies of work Gray kept separate for many years. At sixteen, Gray was attending Hamilton High School by day and by night, photographing the local rock scene—including bands like The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Cannonball Adderly, and The Doors—with his friend-cum-business partner Neil Zlozower. He would go on to work as a publicist and music writer; shoot a number of iconic album covers for artists like Gladys Knight, Cheryl Lynn, and Bobby Brown; have feature spreads in Italian Vogue; and serve as the personal photographer for Michael Jackson. Simultaneously, Gray developed his fine arts practice after studying at CalArts during a storied time in the institution's history; among his faculty were Allan Kaprow and Allan Sekula, and his fellow students included Mike Kelley, Carrie Mae Weems, and Daniel Joseph Martinez. In this exhibition, Gray's extraordinary life and career map onto larger cultural events, offering a simultaneously intimate and macroscopic view of Los Angeles and beyond. The exhibition will be accompanied by a forthcoming publication comprising a richly illustrated, long form interview between Gray and The Brick's director Hamza Walker. Gray and Walker's working relationship dates back to Walker's 2008 exhibition Black Is, Back Ain't at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. Walker also included Gray in his 2016 Made in LA Biennial at the Hammer Museum. In addition to discussing the hard facts of Gray's life—the who, what, when, where—they delve into the expansion of Gray's racial and political consciousness and how those manifests in his work today. Todd Gray: Church and State is organized by Hamza Walker with Hannah Burstein and Storm Bookhard. Support for Todd Gray: Church and State is provided by Perenchio Foundation, Teiger Foundation, Angeles Art Fund, and by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.