Sam Durant, Installation view, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, 2011

Sam Durant

Sam Durant

Iconoclasm

October 1 – November 7, 2020
Los Angeles

5,471 miles

July 21 – August 15, 2020
Los Angeles

Sam Durant

Build Therefore Your Own World

January 7 – February 18, 2017
Los Angeles

Sam Durant

Borrowed Scenery

November 28, 2015 – January 16, 2016
Tokyo

Sam Durant

"Laissez faire et laissez passer, le monde va de lui meme."

February 19 – April 2, 2011
Los Angeles

Endless Bummer / Surf Elsewhere

Organized by Drew Heitzler
July 3 – August 28, 2010
Los Angeles

15th Anniversary Inaugural Exhibition

October 3 – November 14, 2009
Los Angeles

Sam Durant

This Is Freedom?

April 11 – May 16, 2009
Los Angeles

Sam Durant

Scenes from the Pilgrim Story: Myths, Massacres and Monuments

March 3 – April 14, 2007
Los Angeles

Think Blue

July 16 – August 20, 2005
Los Angeles

Sam Durant

Involved

September 11 – October 16, 2004
Los Angeles

Inaugural Group Show

September 4 – October 4, 2003
Los Angeles

Sam Durant

Color Pictures

October 10 – November 9, 2002
Santa Monica

Sam Durant

Proposal for Monument in Friendship Park, Jacksonville, Florida

October 28 – December 2, 2000
Santa Monica

Sam Durant

Altamont

September 9 – October 16, 1999
Santa Monica

Sam Durant, Matthew Antezzo, Dave Muller

June 5 – July 3, 1999
Santa Monica

Next

December 4, 1997 – January 10, 1998
Santa Monica

Sam Durant

MDF, particle board, projection, confusion, grid-like structuring

February 13 – March 22, 1997
Santa Monica

Sam Durant

October 14 – November 22, 1995
Santa Monica

Gone

December 3, 1994 – January 14, 1995
Santa Monica

Broadcasts

Broadcasts: Mutter, Matter, Mother

Organized by Naz Cuguoglu

April 2021

Screening | Sam Durant

Sam Durant

October 12, 2020

Broadcasts: Sam Durant's End White Supremacy

Sam Durant

June 2020

Broadcasts: Staff Selects

May 2020

Broadcasts: Three Day Weekend Presents "The Gallery is Closed"

April 2020

Biography

Sam Durant (b. 1961, Seattle, WA) is an interdisciplinary artist whose works engage myriad social, political, and cultural issues. Growing up near Boston in the 1970s he experienced the radical pedagogy of A.S. Neill, Maria Montessori, and John Holt, along with anti-war demonstrations and the desegregation of the public-school system. Exposure to an educational culture emphasizing democratic ideals, racial equality, and social justice created the framework for Durant’s artistic perspective. Often taking up forgotten events from the past, his work makes connections with ongoing social and cultural issues.

Durant’s interest in monuments and memorials began with Proposal for Monument at Altamont Raceway, Tracy, CA (1999), referencing the violent end to the infamous free concert and arguably to an era; and continued notably with Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions (2005), re-contextualizing memorials to victims of the conquest of North America; and more recently with Proposal for Public Fountain (2015), a marble work depicting an anarchist statue being blasted by a police water cannon. Earlier works excavated subjects as diverse as the repressive practices of Modernism, the death drive of ’60s and ’70s pop music, and artist Robert Smithson’s theories of entropy. Contemporary examples of his oeuvre encompass subjects such as Italian anarchism, cartographic histories of capitalism, gestures of everyday refusal, and the meaning of museums for their visitors. Recent major public art projects include Labyrinth (2015) in Philadelphia, addressing mass incarceration; and The Meeting House (2016) in Concord, MA, focusing on the subject of race in colonial and contemporary New England.

In 2007 Durant compiled and edited the monograph Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas (Rizzoli Intl.) and curated the eponymous exhibition at MOCA, Los Angeles, CA and the New Museum, New York, NY. From 2005–10, he was a member of the collective Transforma Projects, a grassroots cultural rebuilding initiative in New Orleans. In 2012–13, Durant was an artist-in-residence at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles where he collaborated with the education department to produce a discursive social media project called What #isamuseum? This became a solo exhibition in 2016 at UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA.

Durant’s work has been included in numerous international exhibitions including the Busan, Liverpool, Panama, Sydney, Venice, and Whitney Biennials (2006, 2014, 2008, 2008, 2007, 2004, respectively); documenta 13, Kassel, Germany (2012); Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama, Japan (2017); Power to the People: Political Art Now, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany (2018); Forgetting–Why We Don’t Remember Everything, Historisches, Museum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (2019); and Visionary New England, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA (2020). His work can be found in public collections worldwide including the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA; Institut d’Art Contemporain de Villeurbanne, Villeurbanne, France; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa, Canada; Project Row Houses, Houston, TX; Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium; Tate Modern, London, UK; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others.

Selected Works

News

Art21: Sam Durant Deals with Traumatic Histories While Working to Reduce Harm

07/26/2023

Sam Durant: Iconoclasm | Art Exchange, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

02/17/2023

The Normalizing Gaze: Surveillance from Drones to Phones | High Line, New York, NY

07/07/2021

New York Times: With a Drone on the High Line, an Artist Re-Emerges from Controversy

04/14/2021

High Line: Sam Durant

04/14/2021

Sam Durant: Iconoclasm | The Common Guild, Glasgow, UK

05/17/2021

Related Publications

Sam Durant: Proposal for Non-Aligned Monuments, Free Movement

Sam Durant: Iconoclasm

Sam Durant: The Meeting House / Build Therefore Your Own World

Sam Durant: Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions

Sam Durant

Sam Durant: Entropy in Reverse

Monica Bonvicini / Sam Durant: Break It / Fix It

Sam Durant Stickers: Street Pack

Sam Durant Stickers: Power Pack

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BLUM Tokyo is closed for installation until Saturday, March 23.