Sam Gilliam at David Kordansky Gallery

Sam Gilliam: The Last Five Years (installation view) (2024). David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, 2024. Image courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery. Photo: Jeff McLane.

A collection of nylon fabrics, soaked and stained in flurries of paint, hangs from the ceiling of David Kordansky Gallery. Warm tones of pink and lavender are interrupted by bursts of bright yellow, red, and blue, surrounding the audience in a medley of multicolored forms suspended from translucent cords. Currently on view in Sam Gilliam: The Last Five Years, these untitled works comprise the last iteration of Gilliam’s “drape paintings,” and are among the final works that the artist produced.

Emerging from the Washington Color School, an art movement associated with color field painting, Gilliam set himself apart from the group in 1968 when he began to remove the stretchers from his canvases.¹ For Gilliam, the stretcher served as a rigid container that confined the possibilities of an artwork. In an effort to free his paintings from these parameters, he began to drape unstretched canvases across the gallery walls and on the floor.² This decision can be viewed as a political act as much as an artistic one, echoing the tumultuous and revolutionary spirit of the time. From the horrors of the Vietnam War to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, 1968 was a year marked by civil unrest as well as a fervent desire to challenge the oppressive systems that kept people separate and disillusioned.

Fifty-six years later, Gilliam’s drapes still function as a commentary on the structures that both support and inhibit us. Each piece is gathered and hung from a central point, creating soft folds and layers that conceal portions of the fabric. Some of the works remain motionless while others shift in subtle rotations as a breeze or a visitor passes by. We become acutely aware of our bodies as we move amongst Gilliam’s paintings. We step back and the gallery itself becomes a canvas; each drape a vertical brushstroke against the blank white walls. By creating a dialogue between his paintings and the surrounding architecture, Gilliam shifts the audience’s focus from an individual artwork to the collective whole. Simultaneously playful and monumental, the drapes remind us of our agency in shaping our experiences, both within the gallery walls and beyond. The performative element of Gilliam’s works is therefore twofold: In the implication of the artist’s own body in his materials, and in the invitation to shift, as a viewer, from a passive position to an active one.

Gilliam’s presence is perhaps most distinctly felt in his works on paper. Displayed in the West Gallery, Gilliam’s watercolors offer a closer look at the artist’s kaleidoscopic experimentations in color. Thick creases hold an excess of paint where the artist has pressed, folded, and crumpled the paper. Striking a delicate balance between precision and improvisation, Gilliam worked with and against his materials to create topographies of texture within an otherwise 2-dimensional medium. The fibrous, handmade paper appears to blister from the oversaturation of pigment. The result is almost acidic, as if the works are slowly dissolving from the inside out. Joyful and defiant, Sam Gilliam: The Last Five Years celebrates the artist’s lifelong commitment to pushing his materials to their limits. It is often on the brink of destruction, Gilliam seems to remind us, that new perspectives can take shape.

Sam Gilliam: The Last Five Years runs from January 13–March 3, 2024 at David Kordansky Gallery (5130 W. Edgewood Pl., Los Angeles, CA 90019).

Sam Gilliam: The Last Five Years (installation view) (2024). David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, 2024. Image courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Sam Gilliam, Untitled (installation view) (2018). Acrylic on Cerex nylon, installation dimensions variable (approximately 161 x 34 x 34 inches). David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, 2024. Image courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Sam Gilliam, Untitled (installation view) (2018). Acrylic on Cerex nylon, installation dimensions variable (approximately 111 x 39 x 16 inches). David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, 2024. Image courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Sam Gilliam, “A” and the Carpenter II (installation view) (2022). Acrylic on polypropylene, wood, and leather string, installation dimensions variable (approximately 52 x 127 x 195 inches). David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, 2024. Image courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Sam Gilliam: The Last Five Years (installation view) (2024). David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, 2024. Image courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Sam Gilliam: The Last Five Years (installation view) (2024). David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, 2024. Image courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Sam Gilliam, Untitled (tondo) (2022). Acrylic, copper chop, and sawdust on wood panel in custom aluminum frame, 74 x 74 x 3 inches. Image courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Sam Gilliam: The Last Five Years (installation view) (2024). David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, 2024. Image courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Sam Gilliam: The Last Five Years (installation view) (2024). David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, 2024. Image courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Sam Gilliam, Untitled (2022). Watercolor on washi paper, 77.75 x 42 inches. Image courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Sam Gilliam: The Last Five Years (installation view) (2024). David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, 2024. Image courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery. Photo: Jeff McLane.

Nora Kovacs is a Hungarian-American arts professional based in Los Angeles. Her writing has been published by Art in America, AQNB, Berlin Art Link, Burnaway, the Julia Stoschek Foundation, Pelican Bomb, Public Parking, and This Is Tomorrow. Nora holds a BA in Global Liberal Studies from New York University and an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art.

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