Lauren Halsey, the star Los Angeles sculptor who is recently showed a monumental commission on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s rooftop, has joined Gagosian, a move that will put her on the roster of one of the world’s biggest galleries.
Gagosian’s announcement for the news stated that the representation was global. But the arrangement is not exclusive—she will still be with David Kordansky, the Los Angeles gallery that helped make her famous.
Her jump to Gagosian is a further sign that her star is rising. It comes as she prepares to mount her first institutional show in Europe, at the Serpentine Galleries in London, next year.
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Within the US, Halsey is well-known for sculptures and installations that draw on the culture of South Central Los Angeles, the neighborhood where she was born and raised. Frequently focusing on the area’s community, she has located it within a historical continuum of Black artistic production that stretches back to ancient Egyptian structures and forward to the Afrofuturist sounds of Sun Ra.
Part of her practice has entailed contributing back to the neighborhood. She facilitates the Summaeverythang Community Center, which, during Covid, provided food and other resources to locals in need, and she has planned a particularly epic work for Crenshaw Boulevard called The Crenshaw District Hieroglyph Project. When realized, the project will take the form of a cube-like structure with hieroglyphics on its sides and pay homage to an African bazaar that appeared in its place when Halsey was a child.
When prototypes for The Crenshaw District Hieroglyph Project appeared in 2018 at the Hammer Museum’s Made in LA biennial, Halsey took home the show’s $100,000 award for the presentation. Her Met artwork, which came down just a few days ago after an acclaimed months-long run, took a similar form.