Simmons is best known for enigmatic compositions featuring deceptively simple motifs rendered atop broad fields of monochromatic pigment. He extracts these motifs from a variety of archival and pop culture sources, arriving at each selection through an intensive research process. Simmons will create an ambitious new work for the PAMM’s stunning double-height project gallery—a large, ephemeral mural to be painted directly on the gallery’s 30-foot high and 29-foot wide back wall.A single work by Simmons is capable of evoking a multiplicity of meanings, simultaneously referencing a buried episode in the painful history of race relations in the United States and the artist’s own childhood memories, for example. Simmons is known for his use of an eerie erasure effect, which he achieves by blurring his drawings with his hands. Recalling the look of chalk on blackboards, the effect reinforces the mysterious quality of Simmons’ imagery while suggesting movement, the fleetingness of time, the pliability of history, and the inevitable fading of both cultural and personal memory.