Installation view
Artworks © Taryn Simon, photo by Rob McKeever
Installation Video
Taryn Simon, Memorandum of Understanding between the Royal Government of Cambodia and the Government of Australia Relating to the Settlement of Refugees in Cambodia, Ministry of Interior, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, September 26, 2014, from the series Paperwork and the Will of Capital, 2015
Archival inkjet print and text on archival herbarium paper in wood frame, 85 × 73 ¼ × 2 ¾ inches (215.9 × 186.1 × 7 cm), edition of 3 + 2 AP
© Taryn Simon
Taryn Simon, Bratislava Declaration, Bratislava, Slovakia, August 3, 1968, from the series Paperwork and the Will of Capital, 2015
Archival inkjet print and text on archival herbarium paper in wood frame, 85 × 73 ¼ × 2 ¾ inches (215.9 × 186.1 × 7 cm), edition of 3 + 2 AP
© Taryn Simon
Taryn Simon, Bratislava Declaration, Bratislava, Slovakia, August 3, 1968; Dianthus caryophyllus, Carnation, Colombia, from the series Paperwork and the Will of Capital, 2015
Pigmented concrete press, dried plant specimens, archival inkjet prints, text on archival herbarium paper, and steel brace, 43 × 28 ½ × 20 ½ inches (109.2 × 72.4 x 52.1 cm)
© Taryn Simon
Taryn Simon, Agreement Establishing the International Islamic Trade, Finance Corporation, Al-Bayan Palace, Kuwait City, Kuwait, May 30, 2006, from the series Paperwork and the Will of Capital, 2015
Archival inkjet print and text on archival herbarium paper in wood frame, 85 × 73 ¼ × 2 ¾ inches (215.9 × 186.1 × 7 cm), edition of 3 + 2 AP
© Taryn Simon
Taryn Simon, Agreement Establishing the International Islamic Trade, Finance Corporation, Al-Bayan Palace, Kuwait City, Kuwait, May 30, 2006; Rosa × hybrida, Hybrid Tea Rose, Ecuador, Gerbera × hybrida, Gerbera, Netherlands, Hydrangea macrophylla, Big Leaf Hydrangea, Netherlands, Dendrobium hybrid, Dendrobium, Thailand, from the series Paperwork and the Will of Capital, 2015
Pigmented concrete press, dried plant specimens, archival inkjet prints, text on archival herbarium paper, and steel brace, 43 × 28 ½ × 20 ½ inches (109.2 × 72.4 x 52.1 cm)
© Taryn Simon
These flowers sat between powerful men as they signed agreements designed to influence the fate of the world.
—Taryn Simon
Gagosian is pleased to present Taryn Simon’s first exhibition at the New York gallery. The sculptures—Simon’s first foray into the medium—previewed at the 56th Biennale di Venezia in 2015; this exhibition brings them together with large-scale, annotated photographs as a complete body of work for the first time.
The new series comprises twelve unique sculptures and thirty-six editioned photographs. The photographs—large, colorful, and spectacular, with a nod to Pop art, and custom-framed in mahogany to emulate the style of boardroom furniture—speak to the bombast of national and corporate symbolism; the sculptures—stylized concrete flower-presses containing delicate preserved floral specimens and their documentation—operate in a discrete and classified zone.
A storyteller whose grist is the instability of fact, Simon has produced such impactful, research-driven bodies of work as The Innocents (2002); An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007); Contraband (2010); and A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I–XVIII (2008–11); as well as the more whimsical The Picture Collection (2013) and Birds of the West Indies (2013–14). Simon takes empirical photography into the field of post-conceptual practice, with exacting attention to aesthetic and formal concerns.
Last fall, Taryn Simon debuted an interactive sculpture entitled Kleroterion (2024). Based on a device from the beginnings of democracy in Athens, the work was installed at Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York. As part of that presentation, Simon participated in a panel discussion with Nora Lawrence, Tomás González Olavarría, and Philip Lindsay about democracy, sortition, and art’s place in politics.
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.
The Fall 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Jordan Wolfson’s House with Face (2017) on its cover.
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.
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.
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.
The Summer 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006) on its cover.
James Lawrence explores how contemporary artists have grappled with the subject of the library.
The Summer 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail from Afrylic by Ellen Gallagher on its cover.
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.
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.
Taryn Simon’s 2016 exhibitions spanned the globe. Angela Brown brings us highlights from six museums.
