Andrew Sim

Anton Kern Gallery, New York, and The Modern Institute, Glasgow, are pleased to present A Pink Horse With a Rainbow and Stars, Andrew Sim’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.

For their LA debut, the artist has created a new body of pastel works incorporating their signature motifs; pink horses, rainbow-colored monkey puzzle trees, yuccas, birds in flight, sasquatches, and a hairless werewolf. The artist pulls this visual repertoire from an unconscious place inhabited by dream images, classic archetypes, and memories that have gained psychological significance. By externalizing these interior images, Sim elegantly unfolds ideas around their gender presentation and desire for queer placemaking. More generally, the expressive postures and otherworldly glow of their subjects speak to feelings of vulnerability, growth, and affirmation.

After-the-fact it becomes apparent that progressions in their practice coincide with landmarks in their personal life. Over the past year, winged animals have come to the fore in their work, paralleling Sim’s constant travel for projects between London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and New York; plants are thriving and find themselves encircled by tulips, corresponding to the artist’s immersion in queer nightlife; stars and rainbows are afterimages of LED-lit urban environments. While these narratives are informative, there is no prescriptive reading of the works. For Sim, successful pieces are relatable in their encoded queerness and open-ended enough for everyone to engage with.

Andrew Sim was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1987, and currently lives and works in New York. They graduated with a degree in sculpture from The Glasgow School of Art in 2014. Their work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Anton Kern Gallery, New York (2024, 2023); The Modern Institute, (Glasgow 2023, 2022 and London 2023); and Karma, New York (2019). They were also the recipient of the prestigious 2024 Commission from Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh.