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Taryn Simon

Installation view, Taryn Simon: The Color of a Flea’s Eye: The Picture Collection, New York Public Library, September 24, 2021–May 17, 2022 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view, Taryn Simon: The Color of a Flea’s Eye: The Picture Collection, New York Public Library, September 24, 2021–May 17, 2022

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Rob McKeever

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Birds of the West Indies, Conservatory Gallery, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, New York, June 7–October 23, 2022 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Liz Ligon

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Birds of the West Indies, Conservatory Gallery, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, New York, June 7–October 23, 2022

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Liz Ligon

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Cold Hole, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, May 26, 2018–March 25, 2019 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: David Dashiell, courtesy MASS MoCA

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Cold Hole, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, May 26, 2018–March 25, 2019

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: David Dashiell, courtesy MASS MoCA

Installation view, Taryn Simon: An Occupation of Loss, Islington Green and Essex Road, London, April 17–28, 2018. Produced by Artangel. A co-commission by Artangel and Park Avenue Armory Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Hugo Glendinning/Taryn Simon Projects, courtesy the artist

Installation view, Taryn Simon: An Occupation of Loss, Islington Green and Essex Road, London, April 17–28, 2018. Produced by Artangel. A co-commission by Artangel and Park Avenue Armory

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Hugo Glendinning/Taryn Simon Projects, courtesy the artist

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Paperwork and the Will of Capital, MOMENTA | Biennale de l’image at Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Quebec, September 8–November 19, 2017 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay, courtesy MAC Montréal

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Paperwork and the Will of Capital, MOMENTA | Biennale de l’image at Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Quebec, September 8–November 19, 2017

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay, courtesy MAC Montréal

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Birds of the West Indies, Carnegie International 56th Edition, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, October 5, 2013–March 16, 2014 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Greenhouse Media, courtesy Carnegie Museum of Art and Gagosian

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Birds of the West Indies, Carnegie International 56th Edition, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, October 5, 2013–March 16, 2014

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Greenhouse Media, courtesy Carnegie Museum of Art and Gagosian

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Soldier Is Taught to Bayonet the Enemy and Not Some Undefined Abstraction, Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic, April 27–July 10, 2016 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Martin Polák, courtesy Galerie Rudolfinum

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Soldier Is Taught to Bayonet the Enemy and Not Some Undefined Abstraction, Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic, April 27–July 10, 2016

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Martin Polák, courtesy Galerie Rudolfinum

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 2–September 3, 2012 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar, courtesy Museum of Modern Art

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 2–September 3, 2012

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar, courtesy Museum of Modern Art

Installation view, Taryn Simon, Helsinki Art Museum, Finland, March 9–May 13, 2012 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Hanna Kukorelli, courtesy Helsinki Art Museum

Installation view, Taryn Simon, Helsinki Art Museum, Finland, March 9–May 13, 2012

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Hanna Kukorelli, courtesy Helsinki Art Museum

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Action Research/The Stagecraft of Power, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, March 17–May 22, 2016 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Naroditskiy Alexey, courtesy Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Action Research/The Stagecraft of Power, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, March 17–May 22, 2016

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Naroditskiy Alexey, courtesy Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

Installation view, Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, March 9–June 24, 2007 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Sheldan Collins, courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art

Installation view, Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, March 9–June 24, 2007

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Sheldan Collins, courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art

Installation view, Taryn Simon: The Innocents, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2003 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: courtesy KW Institute for Contemporary Art

Installation view, Taryn Simon: The Innocents, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2003

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: courtesy KW Institute for Contemporary Art

Installation view, Taryn Simon: An Occupation of Loss, Park Avenue Armory, New York, September 13–25, 2016 © Taryn Simon. Photo: Naho Kubota, courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Installation view, Taryn Simon: An Occupation of Loss, Park Avenue Armory, New York, September 13–25, 2016

© Taryn Simon. Photo: Naho Kubota, courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Action Research/The Stagecraft of Power, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, March 17–May 22, 2016 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Naroditskiy Alexey, courtesy Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Action Research/The Stagecraft of Power, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, March 17–May 22, 2016

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Naroditskiy Alexey, courtesy Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Shouting Is under Calling, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland, February 24–June 16, 2018 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Annik Wetter Photographie, courtesy Gagosian

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Shouting Is under Calling, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland, February 24–June 16, 2018

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Annik Wetter Photographie, courtesy Gagosian

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Rear Views, a Star-Forming Nebula, and the Office of Foreign Propaganda, Jeu de Paume, Paris, February 24–May 17, 2015 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Romain Darnaud, courtesy Jeu de Paume

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Rear Views, a Star-Forming Nebula, and the Office of Foreign Propaganda, Jeu de Paume, Paris, February 24–May 17, 2015

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Romain Darnaud, courtesy Jeu de Paume

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, September 21, 2011–January 1, 2012 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: David von Becker, courtesy Neue Nationalgalerie

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, September 21, 2011–January 1, 2012

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: David von Becker, courtesy Neue Nationalgalerie

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Soldier Is Taught to Bayonet the Enemy and Not Some Undefined Abstraction, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Germany, October 27, 2016–January 15, 2017 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: David Pinzer, courtesy Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Soldier Is Taught to Bayonet the Enemy and Not Some Undefined Abstraction, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Germany, October 27, 2016–January 15, 2017

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: David Pinzer, courtesy Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Soldier Is Taught to Bayonet the Enemy and Not Some Undefined Abstraction, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Germany, October 27, 2016–January 15, 2017 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: David Pinzer, courtesy Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Soldier Is Taught to Bayonet the Enemy and Not Some Undefined Abstraction, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Germany, October 27, 2016–January 15, 2017

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: David Pinzer, courtesy Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Installation view, Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, October 29, 2016–January 15, 2017 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Poul Buchard/Broendum & Co, courtesy Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Installation view, Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, October 29, 2016–January 15, 2017

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Poul Buchard/Broendum & Co, courtesy Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Rear Views, a Star-Forming Nebula, and the Office of Foreign Propaganda, Jeu de Paume, Paris, February 24–May 17, 2015 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Romain Darnaud, courtesy Jeu de Paume

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Rear Views, a Star-Forming Nebula, and the Office of Foreign Propaganda, Jeu de Paume, Paris, February 24–May 17, 2015

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Romain Darnaud, courtesy Jeu de Paume

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Paperwork and the Will of Capital, United Nations, 2016 Treaty Event, New York, 2016 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Installation view, Taryn Simon: Paperwork and the Will of Capital, United Nations, 2016 Treaty Event, New York, 2016

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, October 15, 2013–January 5, 2014 Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Peter Lo, courtesy Ullens Center for Contemporary Art

Installation view, Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, October 15, 2013–January 5, 2014

Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Peter Lo, courtesy Ullens Center for Contemporary Art

About

Archives exist because there’s something that can’t necessarily be articulated. Something is said in the gaps between all the information.
—Taryn Simon

Taryn Simon directs our attention to familiar systems of organization—bloodlines, criminal investigations, flower arrangements—making visible the contours of power and authority hidden within. Incorporating mediums ranging from photography and sculpture to text, sound, and performance, each of her projects is shaped by years of rigorous research and planning, including obtaining access from institutions as varied as the US Department of Homeland Security and Playboy Enterprises, Inc.

Born in New York, where she lives and works, Simon received a BA in semiotics from Brown University in 1997. In 2001 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for what would become her first major photographic and textual work: The Innocents (2002), which was exhibited at MoMA PS 1. Documenting cases of wrongful conviction in the United States, The Innocents calls into question photography’s function as a credible eyewitness and arbiter of justice.

In 2007 Simon’s series An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007) was presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The photographs depict objects, sites, and spaces that are integral to America’s foundation, mythology, and daily functioning, but that remain inaccessible or unknown. These subjects include radioactive capsules at a nuclear waste storage facility, a black bear in hibernation, and the art collection of the CIA. The following year Simon began A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I–XVIII (2011), for which she traveled the world researching and recording bloodlines and their related stories. In each of the work’s eighteen “chapters,” the external forces of territory, power, circumstance, and religion collide with the internal forces of psychological and physical inheritance. The subjects documented by Simon include victims of genocide in Bosnia, test rabbits infected with a lethal disease in Australia, the first woman to hijack an aircraft, and the “living dead” in India. Her collection is at once cohesive and arbitrary, mapping the relationships among chance, blood, and other components of fate. For Contraband (2010), Simon spent a week at JFK International Airport in New York, photographing the goods that were seized as they entered the US from abroad. An archive of global desires and perceived threats, Contraband encompasses 1,075 images of items set against crisp pale gray backgrounds. A formal inverse of these works can be found in Black Square (2006–), in which Simon isolates objects, documents, and individuals within a black field with precisely the same measurements as Kazimir Malevich’s 1915 Suprematist work of the same name.

In 2012–13 Simon began work on Image Atlas (2012–) and The Picture Collection (2013–), projects that bridge physical and digital archives. The former, created with computer programmer Aaron Swartz, investigates cultural differences and similarities by indexing top image results for given search terms across local search engines throughout the world. The latter was inspired by the New York Public Library’s picture archive, whose 1.2 million printed images, organized under more than 12,000 subject headings, comprise the largest circulating picture library in the world. In 2013 Simon also produced Birds of the West Indies, a two-part series that takes its title from a taxonomy by American ornithologist James Bond. Part I is a visual inventory of the women, weapons, and vehicles appearing in the film franchise featuring the fictional British spy James Bond; this visual database of interchangeable variables used in the production of fantasy examines the economic and emotional value generated by their repetition.  In Part II, Simon identifies, photographs, and classifies every bird that appears in the first twenty-four James Bond films. Simon pored over every scene to discover these moments of chance, training her eye away from the agents of seduction—glamour, luxury, power, violence, sex—to look only in the margins.

In Paperwork and the Will of Capital (2015), Simon re-created centerpieces from official photographs of international political signings, underscoring how the stagecraft of power is created, performed, marketed, and maintained. The signings that inform the series involve the countries that were present at the 1944 United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, which addressed the globalization of economies after World War II and led to the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The concrete flower presses comprising the series’ sculptural component were included in the 2015 Venice Biennale. The following year Simon presented her first performance work, An Occupation of Loss (2016), in which professional mourners enact rituals of grief, broadcasting their lamentations from within a sculptural installation. Their sonic mourning is performed in recitations that include northern Albanian laments, which seek to excavate “uncried words”; Wayuu laments, which safeguard the soul’s passage to the Milky Way; Greek Epirotic laments, which bind the story of a life with its afterlife; and Yezidi laments, which map a topography of displacement and exile. Performed in New York in 2016 and in London in 2018, An Occupation of Loss probes the anatomy of loss and the intricate systems used to manage contingencies of fate and the uncertain universe.

Performance continues to intersect with Simon’s photographic work. Her 2018 exhibition at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, included two performance-based works, A Cold Hole (2018) and Assembled Audience (2018). In the former, Simon transports the ancient ritual of cold water immersion into the museum, inviting the public to seek the uncertain opportunity for a quick fix. Cold-water plunges’ long history of notable participants includes Apache leader Geronimo, who employed cold-water immersion to prepare boys for manhood and battle; biologist Charles Darwin; and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The shock of plunging into freezing water overrides thought and elicits from participants a gasp like that experienced during sudden death, sleep arrhythmia, and birth. Assembled Audience probes the phenomenon of engineered applause. Over a one-year period, Simon recorded the claps of individuals attending events at the three largest venues in Columbus, Ohio, a city nicknamed “Test City, USA” because its demographics so closely mirror those of the nation as a whole. She layered these recordings into a dense soundscape that plays in a darkened space, gathering individuals with divergent political, corporate, and ideological allegiances into a single crowd that surrounds the viewer. The MASS MoCA exhibition also featured the first major museum installation of Simon’s bookwork, a central aspect of her carefully researched multimedia work.

Taryn Simon

Photo: courtesy the artist and MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts

Website

tarynsimon.com

Richard Avedon’s Marilyn Monroe, actor, New York, May 6, 1957 on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly, Summer 2023

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2023

The Summer 2023 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Richard Avedon’s Marilyn Monroe, actor, New York, May 6, 1957 on its cover.

Jordan Wolfson’s House with Face (2017) on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly, Fall 2022

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2022

The Fall 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Jordan Wolfson’s House with Face (2017) on its cover.

Taryn Simon, details from An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, 2007; A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I–XVIII, 2008–11; A Cold Hole, 2018; An Occupation of Loss, 2016; and Paperwork and the Will of Capital, 2015

In Conversation
Taryn Simon and Teju Cole

This spring, as part of the Lambert Family Lecture Series at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Taryn Simon joined Teju Cole for an online conversation about her artistic practice and creative process.

Still from video documentation of a 2018 performance of Taryn Simon's An Occupation of Loss.

Taryn Simon: An Occupation of Loss

In Taryn Simon’s performance work An Occupation of Loss  (2016), professional mourners enact rituals of grief, simultaneously broadcasting their lamentations from within a sculptural installation. This video by filmmaker Boris B. Bertram documents the April 2018 performance of this work with Artangel in Islington, London.

Taryn Simon, “Folder: Broken Objects” (detail), from the series The Picture Collection, 2012, framed archival inkjet print, 47 × 62 inches (119.4 × 157.5 cm) © Taryn Simon

The New York Public Library’s Picture Collection

Joshua Chuang, the Robert B. Menschel Senior Curator of Photography at the New York Public Library, discusses the institution’s singular Picture Collection, the artist Taryn Simon’s rigorous engagement with it, and four instances of its little-known role in the history of art making.

Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006), on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly, Summer 2021

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2021

The Summer 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006) on its cover.

Anselm Kiefer, Volkszählung (Census), 1991, steel, lead, glass, peas, and photographs, 163 ⅜ × 224 ½ × 315 inches (4.1 × 5.7 × 8 m)/

Cast of Characters

James Lawrence explores how contemporary artists have grappled with the subject of the library.

Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2019

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2019

The Summer 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail from Afrylic by Ellen Gallagher on its cover.

From Mortal Bodies to Immortal Crowds

From Mortal Bodies to Immortal Crowds

Two immersive installations by Taryn Simon presented at MASS MoCA in 2018–19 examined the rituals of cold-water plunges and applause. Text by Angela Brown.

Free Arts NYC

The Bigger Picture
Free Arts NYC

Meredith Mendelsohn discusses the impact of Free Arts NYC and its mission to foster creativity in children and teens, on the occasion of its twenty-year anniversary.

Obscuring the Index

Obscuring the Index

Taryn Simon’s 2016 exhibitions spanned the globe. Angela Brown brings us highlights from six museums.

Fairs, Events & Announcements

Gagosian’s booth at Paris Photo 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Man Ray 2015 Trust/ADAGP, Paris 2023; ©️ Estate of Jan Groover; © Kwame Brathwaite; © Jeff Wall; © 2023 June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation; © Tyler Mitchell. Photo: Thomas Lannes

Art Fair

Paris Photo 2023
Still Life Stilled

November 9–12, 2023, booth b10
Grand Palais Ephémère, Paris
www.parisphoto.com

Gagosian is pleased to participate in Paris Photo 2023 at the Grand Palais Éphémère. Still Life Stilled is a catalytic presentation, organized by Joshua Chuang, of historical and contemporary works that explore photography’s unique capacity to both invest inanimate tableaux with substance and find meaning in suspending the theater of life.

Gagosian’s booth at Paris Photo 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Man Ray 2015 Trust/ADAGP, Paris 2023; ©️ Estate of Jan Groover; © Kwame Brathwaite; © Jeff Wall; © 2023 June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation; © Tyler Mitchell. Photo: Thomas Lannes

Piero Golia, The Best Is Yet to Come, 2020 © Piero Golia

Auction

Printed Matter
Spring Benefit Auction

May 24–June 8, 2023

This online benefit auction for Printed Matter features over sixty donated artworks—some of which were created especially for the fundraiser—by contemporary artists, including Richard ArtschwagerPiero GoliaAdam McEwenRichard PrinceEd RuschaTaryn Simon, and Jonas Wood. Proceeds from the auction, which is hosted by Artsy, will support the nonprofit organization’s mission to further the distribution, understanding, and appreciation of artist’s books and related publications.

Piero Golia, The Best Is Yet to Come, 2020 © Piero Golia

Photo: Brigitte Lacombe

Artist Spotlight

Taryn Simon

June 23–29, 2021

A storyteller and researcher driven by the mutability of fact and the documentary potential of fiction, Taryn Simon directs our attention to systems of organization—bloodlines, circulating picture collections, mourning rituals, ceremonial flower arrangements—revealing the structures of power and authority hidden within. Working in photography, sculpture, text, sound, performance, and installation, she traces lineages of objects, families, nations, and histories.

Photo: Brigitte Lacombe

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Museum Exhibitions

Photo: Cisternerne, Frederiksbergmuseerne, Frederiksberg, Denmark

Just Opened

Taryn Simon
Start Again the Lament

Through November 30, 2024
Cisternerne, Frederiksbergmuseerne, Frederiksberg, Denmark
frederiksbergmuseerne.dk

Start Again the Lament is an extensive sound installation by Taryn Simon broadcast into the subterranean urban dripstone cave of the Cisternerne. Performed by professional mourners, the work explores how people mourn individually and collectively, considering the anatomy of grief and whom we choose to guide us through it. These sonic rituals of loss and discontent—including northern Albanian, Wayuu, Greek Epirotic, and Yazidi laments—transform the exhibition space into an instrument echoing recitations with a reverberation of seventeen seconds.              

Photo: Cisternerne, Frederiksbergmuseerne, Frederiksberg, Denmark

Taryn Simon, Agreement to develop Park Hyatt St. Kitts under the St. Kitts & Nevis Citizenship by Investment Program. Dubai, United Arab Emirates, July 16, 2012, from the series Paperwork and the Will of Capital, 2015 © Taryn Simon

On View

Taryn Simon in
Guest Relations

Through April 28, 2024
Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai
jameelartscentre.org

Guest Relations brings together artwork and archival and architectural research to explore the historical, political, social, and cultural transformations that accompany processes of intense tourism. Examining the transactional nature of modern hospitality, the exhibition considers hotels as sites of artistic investigation, tracing their origins in colonial grandeur and hubris to their current, often generic, ubiquity in the age of globalization. Work by Taryn Simon is included.

Taryn Simon, Agreement to develop Park Hyatt St. Kitts under the St. Kitts & Nevis Citizenship by Investment Program. Dubai, United Arab Emirates, July 16, 2012, from the series Paperwork and the Will of Capital, 2015 © Taryn Simon

Taryn Simon, Chapter XI, from the series A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I–XVIII, 2008–11 © Taryn Simon

On View

Taryn Simon in
Don’t Forget to Call Your Mother

Through September 15, 2024
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
www.metmuseum.org

At a time when photographs are primarily shared and saved digitally, many artists are returning to the physicality of snapshots in albums or pictures in archives as sources of inspiration. Taking its title from a photograph by Maurizio Cattelan, the exhibition Don’t Forget to Call Your Mother brings together works in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from the 1970s to today. The selected works reflect upon the complicated feelings of nostalgia and sentimentality evoked by these physical artifacts, while underlining the power of the found object. Work by Taryn Simon is included.

Taryn Simon, Chapter XI, from the series A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I–XVIII, 2008–11 © Taryn Simon

Taryn Simon, Agreement to form a Palestinian national unity government. Mecca, Saudi Arabia, February 8, 2007, from the series Paperwork and the Will of Capital, 2015 © Taryn Simon

Closed

Taryn Simon in
Flower Power

September 29, 2023–January 7, 2024
Musée des impressionnismes Giverny, France
www.mdig.fr

This exhibition explores the symbolism of flowers, from antiquity to the present, through more than one hundred works, including paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations, prints, books, and clothing. Flower Power is organized in thematic sections devoted to history and mythology, the relationship between science and art, religion, and politics and economy. This exhibition has traveled from Kunsthalle München in Munich, where it was titled Flowers Forever: Blumen In Kunst Und Kultur. Work by Taryn Simon is included.

Taryn Simon, Agreement to form a Palestinian national unity government. Mecca, Saudi Arabia, February 8, 2007, from the series Paperwork and the Will of Capital, 2015 © Taryn Simon

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Press

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