Faces to Watch in ’95 : We’re Counting on Them : ART

Some of them you know. Some you don’t. But the following artists, entertainers and executives have one thing in common: We’re counting on each to mae a significant impact or difference in their respective fields this year. Sure, there will be thers who make a splash, but after we talked with dozens of people who work in entertainment and the arts, these were the names mentioned most often. You might say that Jim Carrey was a face to watch in ‘94, and you would be right. But, based on “Ace Ventura,” “The Mask,” and “Dumb and Dumber,” Carrey’s ’95 should bear watching. Another pair of familiar faces--Jay Leno and David Letterman--appear on our list. Why? Haven’t we looked at these guys enough? Well, truth be told, how do you know what’s going to happen to them this year? Fame can be sooooo fleeting.

Gary Simmons

In the 4 1/2 years since Gary Simmons graduated from CalArts, the 30-year-old New York-based artist has developed a distinctive form of drawing that reworks nostalgic imagery from popular culture to explode its suffocating assumptions. Usually executed in smudged chalk on slate-painted board, these “Erasure” drawings dismantle subtle racial stereotypes, such as those of the classic Disney film in which caricatured black crows teach Dumbo to fly.

Simmons also makes sculptural installations on similar themes, but his drawings have been his most consistently resonant work. In September, the two genres will attempt a kind of merger in an exhibition commissioned for the Lannan Foundation’s gallery near Marina del Rey. The gallery’s sky-lit 17-foot walls will be painted with slate, as the site for an ambitious room-size project. Simmons has executed smaller wall works for exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York and Paris, but this will be his first “environmental drawing” on a monumental scale.