Anticlastic Is A Must-See Art Exhibition Dedicated To Grillz

Artisan jewelry and body modification as status symbols have been part of the cultural hierarchy since the beginning of civilization. It's easy to grow numb to seeing ancient regalia in museum glass boxes without any thought as to how those cultures might’ve actually seen those pieces at the time. However, a new Dallas exhibition is modernizing that concept.

This summer, the Dallas Contemporary looks to stay true to its name with an exhibition centered around a symbolic trend that’s about as contemporary as it gets: grillz.

The exhibition, Anticlastic, features 12 elaborately designed pieces by New York-based artist Masahiro LaMarsh and is curated by the museum's communications and graphic design manager, Alexandra Hulsey.

“These are small sculptures,” Hulsey says. “[It’s] grounding and solidifying these pieces [LaMarsh] made as sculptures, nodding to the cultural impact of grillz and putting them in this institution in this context.”
Historical context can inform appreciation for a showcase like Anticlastic — ancient Mayans developed an archaic adhesive to glue colored stones like jade or turquoise to the fronts of their teeth. In Feudal Japan, ohaguro referred to the social elites’ custom of blackening their teeth with iron and vinegar, as immortalized in centuries of paintings from the period.

“You look back at the history of grillz,” LaMarsh says. “There are civilizations and societies that have had this natural inclination to adorn teeth.”

Suffice it to say, museums hundreds of years from now might be teaching future generations about the cultural importance of figures like Lil Wayne.

In some ways, LaMarsh’s Anticlastic is a brief preview of that potential future, taking up a sleek, blacked-out room with the grillz displayed on small piles of black sand. He first discussed the idea for an installation dedicated to grillz during Hulsey’s visit to his New York studio, where he crafts custom grillz and various metalworks. To him, the process is deeply personal.

“I’m trying to transmute someone’s soul,” he says. “Making something custom for them that’s an accoutrement to who they are as a human. It’s such an interesting process. I can make anything. What can we make that fits for that person? I think it takes a lot of empathy and alchemical spirituality. That’s helped me a lot, even for myself.”

The grillz selected for Anticlastic are highly elaborate, with pieces resembling a bookshelf, a cathedral and an eyeball.

It also features two centerpieces. The first is titled "Seven Gates," made with 22-karat gold and Moroccan amethyst and custom-designed and worn by Erykah Badu. The second is "Cherry Blossom," an 18-karat white gold and pink sapphire grill made for musician Shigeto, who shares Japanese heritage with LaMarsh. The two pieces both feature video accompaniments made by LaMarsh and director Andrew Garcia, which screen on the back wall of the exhibition.

Anticlastic debuted on Saturday, June 21, and will be shown at the Contemporary through August 31. We got to preview the show a day before it opened, and LaMarsh made sure to point out one grill in particular, where he went off script and continued the cast past the teeth and onto the gums. We’d never seen a grill like that one, just as we’d never seen an installation solely dedicated to grillz. It was a curveball, seemingly emblematic of Anticlastic’s thesis, which is not to be defined by anything but yourself.

“Acknowledging constraints is a very formative thought for our process,” LaMarsh says. “Why stop at where the teeth end? Just the simplest, intuitive question: why does it have to look pretty? Let’s break that rule.”