Diane Simpson
Chicago, United States
WebsiteDiane Simpson, born 1935, is a Chicago-based artist who for the past forty years has created sculptures and preparatory drawings that evolve from a diverse range of sources, including clothing, utilitarian objects, and architecture. The structures of clothing forms have continuously informed her work, serving as a vehicle for exploring their visually formal qualities, while also revealing their connections to the design and architecture of various cultures and periods in history. Her wide selection of materials (wood, perforated metals, linoleum, fabrics) reflect her interest in the coexistence of the industrial/architectonic and domestic worlds. She has exhibited widely in the US and abroad; most recently in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. In 2010, a retrospective was held at the Chicago Cultural Center, and she has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. She received a BFA in 1971 and an MFA in 1978 from the Art Institute of Chicago. Simpson is represented by Corbett vs Dempsey, Chicago; JTT, NY; and Herald St, London.
CAB 5 Contribution
Project Overview
Samurai # 1, print with construction (multiple of 2), 1981
Diane Simpson is interested in the transformation and reinvention of a diverse range of forms from the world of applied arts, including clothing, furniture, utilitarian objects, and vernacular industrial architecture. In particular, the structure of clothing forms and their functional and sociological roles has continuously informed her work. She typically concentrates on a section or detail of clothing— a turn of a collar or the shape of a sleeve. Architecture also has had a strong influence on Simpson’s work. In a similar manner, she isolates a section of a building—chimney, window, roof shape— that intrigues her.
Each of Simpson’s sculptures is initially informed by a specific reference, such as a child’s bib, that she develops and transforms through drawings. At the same time, the form is influenced by architecture, for example an Art Deco detail. These hybrid, distilled forms take shape through her choices of materials and means of construction. The results are abstractions that often retain a suggestion or essence of the initial source. In the melding of the wearable with the structural, unwearable, Simpson’s works seamlessly shift from body to architectural form.
Courtesy of the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey
Past Works
Project Overview