Ken Gonzales-Day, Untitled, #94 from the Dysmorphologies Series Abstract Large Color Photograph

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This extra large montage of photographs is mounted onto aluminum from Ken Gonzales-Day's dysmorphologies series. Photo paper mounted to aluminum.

… Read more This extra large montage of photographs is mounted onto aluminum from Ken Gonzales-Day's dysmorphologies series. Photo paper mounted to aluminum.

Ken Gonzales-Day's interdisciplinary and conceptually grounded projects consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the limits of representational systems ranging from the lynching photograph to museum display. The Searching for California Hang Trees series offered a critical look at the legacies of landscape photography in the West while his most recent project considers the sculptural depiction of race. Profiled began as an exploration of the influence of eighteenth century "scientific" thought on twenty-first century institutions ranging from the museum to the prison and extended to the sculpture and portrait bust collections of several major museums including: The J. Paul Getty Museum; The Field Museum, Chicago; The Museum of Man, San Diego; L'École des beaux-arts,Paris. The Bode Museum, Berlin, Park Sanssouci, Potsdam; The National Museum of Natural History, Paris; The Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; among others. Gonzales-Day lives in Los Angeles and is Chair of the Art Department at Scripps College.

Much of Gonzales-Day's work considers the larger political and social representational histories of the Mexican-American experience. His early work draws on the constructed photo methods of artists like Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman, or Gregory Crewdson. For example, in Bone Grass Boy (1996), Gonzales-Day casts himself as all the central characters in a staged photonovella set during the Mexican American War. In a later series entitled Erased Lynchings (2004-2006), Gonzales-Day explores the history of lynching in the American West by appropriating and digitally altering an archive of 19th and 20th century postcards that depict Mexican and Mexican-American lynchings. In 2012, Gonzales-Day received the Creative Capital Award in the discipline of Visual Arts. In 2014, he created his project titled Run Up which pairs together recreated images of lynchings from the 1920s and images of police brutality from Ferguson and Los Angeles. The title, Run Up, stems from the term for an illegal lynching. Court-ordered executions were called hangings while hate crimes were referred to as "run-ups".

Along with his artwork, Gonzales-Day has authored two monographs. His first, Profiled, deals with the works of Malvina Hoffman mainly, among other sculpture artists. His main intent was to address the distinction between portraiture and caricature. His monograph, Lynching in the West, compares historical images with contemporary images of lynching sites in the state of California from 1850-1935. It emphasizes hate crimes committed against Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans.
Fellowships and Grants
Chercheur Accueilli, Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art (INHA); COLA Individual Artist Award; Art Mattes Grant; Mid-Career Award, California Communtiy Foundation; Durfee Fondation ACG; Graves Award for the Humanities; Visiting Scholar/Artist-in-Residence, Getty Research Institute; Senior Fellow, American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution; Fellow, Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy; Van Lier Fellow, ISP, Whitney Museum of American Art; Rotary International.

Select Solo Exhibitions
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles; Galerie Steph, Singapore; The Vincent Price Museum, LA; Fred Torres Collaborations, NYC; Tufts University, Medford, MA; Las Cienegas Projects, L.A.; UCSD Art Gallery, La Jolla, CA; Steve Turner Contemporary, L.A.; LAXART, L.A.; CUE Art Foundation, NY, NY; Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA; Susanne Vielmetter Projects, L. A.; Cristinerose Gallery, NY, NY; White Columns, NY, NY, Muse X, among others.

Select Group Exhibitions
Our America: The Latino presence in American Art, Smithsonian Institution; MDE11, Medellin, Colombia; COLA 2011, at LAMAG, Los Angeles; Spy Numbers, Palais de Tokyo, Paris;How Many Billboards, MAK Center, W.H.; State of Mind, MoPA, San Diego; Phantom Sightings, LACMA, L.A.(traveled); Encuentro Hemispherico, Bogota; Under Erasure, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin; Under Pain of Death, Austrian Cultural Forum, NYC;ArtMediaPolitique, DIX291, Paris; Viva Mexico, Zacheta National Gallery, Warsaw (traveled); Past Over, Steve Turner Contemporary, L.A.; Crimes of Omission, ICA Philadelphia; Exile of the Imaginary, Generali Foundation, Vienna; Civil Restitutions, Thomas Dane Gallery, London; An Image Bank for Everyday Revolutionary Life, REDCAT, L.A.; Log Cabin, Artist's Space, NYC; Made in California, LACMA, L.A.; Reimaging the West, SF Camerawork, S. F.; FotoLatina, Museo de las Artes, Guadalajara, Five Continents and One City, Mexico City; and the Art Mall at the New Museum, NYC; among others. See less