About
What is not known, rarely seen, possesses a form of occult glamour, and it is that black beauty which [Simon] so brightly, and brilliantly, reveals.
—Salman Rushdie
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition by Taryn Simon. This will be the first viewing of her series An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar in Los Angeles.
In this body of work spanning over four years, Taryn Simon confronts the obstacles facing public access to expert knowledge by offering entry, via photography to a selection of restricted or rarely discovered sites across the United States. The resulting series is an exposé of the unseen realities beneath the surface of modern American culture. Simon documents subjects from a wide span of cultural sub-headings, including nature, science, government, and religion. Her photographs range from eccentric to haunting, from a copy of Playboy written in Braille to a portrait of a cancer ridden patient fighting for the right to end his life. She uses a large-format view camera when conditions permit, and each of her compositions is accompanied by a text explaining subject and context. The addition of word to image underscores Simon’s dual role as voyeur and informant. An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar reveals that for every visible facet of American culture there is an obscured recess equally fundamental to the framework of a national identity.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
News
Online Reading
Salman Rushdie
Foreword to “An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar”
Democracy needs visibility, accountability, light. It is in the unseen darkness that unsavoury things huddle and grow.
—Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie discusses Taryn Simon’s An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, which depicts objects, sites, and spaces that are integral to America’s foundation, mythology, and daily operations but that remain inaccessible or unknown. His text is available for online reading from June 23 through August 31 as part of Artist Spotlight: Taryn Simon.
Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (3rd ed. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2013)