On View
Fairs & Collecting
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
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.
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.
Notes on Social Works
Antwaun Sargent presents a collection of thoughts and images, gathered from conversations with artists, curators, architects, and educators, as well as essays, social media, and the news, that inform the exhibition Social Works. The essay serves as an introduction to the corresponding supplement guest edited by Sargent for the Summer 2021 issue of the Quarterly.
Frank Gehry: Fish Lamps
Paul Goldberger traces the history of the fish form throughout Frank Gehry’s career.
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.
Helen Frankenthaler: A Painter’s Sculptures
On the occasion of four exhibitions in London exploring different aspects of Helen Frankenthaler’s work, Lauren Mahony introduces texts by the sculptor Anthony Caro and by the artist herself on her relatively unfamiliar first body of sculpture, made in the summer of 1972 in Caro’s London studio.
Adriana Varejão: For a Poetics of Difference
Curator Luisa Duarte considers the artist’s oeuvre, writing on Varejão’s active engagement with theories of difference, as well as the cultural specters of the past.
Fashion and Art: Proenza Schouler
Derek Blasberg speaks with Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough, the designers behind the New York fashion brand Proenza Schouler, about their influences and collaborations, from Mark Rothko to Harmony Korine.
Game Changer
Thomas McEvilley
David Frankel celebrates the art-historical contributions made by the scholar, poet, and critic Thomas McEvilley.
Game Changer
Vicomtesse Marie-Laure de Noailles
Ariella Wolens explores the patron’s role in fostering the legendary art world of early twentieth-century France.
To Create a Vision: Jia Aili in Conversation with Philip Tinari
Jia Aili speaks with curator Philip Tinari about his arts education, his working process, and his desire to expand the talking points around painting.
Building a Legacy
Famously Unknown: Legacy Building in the Art World
In this video, Raymond Foye and Rani Singh discuss the general principles and methodologies of archiving, editing, and presenting the work of overlooked artists and writers. They share firsthand accounts and learning experiences from working with artists and poets such as Jordan Belson, Gregory Corso, Rene Ricard, and Harry Smith.
Events & Announcements
In Conversation
Clare Croft, Calvin Royal III, Christopher Rudd
Tuesday, June 29, 2021, 1pm edt
Gagosian and American Ballet Theatre (ABT) will host an online conversation about choreographer Christopher Rudd’s Touché (2020), in celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride Month. The pas de deux—available to watch on ABT’s YouTube channel during the month of June—follows João Menegussi and Calvin Royal III through a charged, vulnerable, and ultimately tender love story. The work is unique for its challenge of ballet’s traditional gender roles and use of an intimacy director to navigate choreographic consent. Royal and Rudd will be joined by Clare Croft, scholar and editor of Queer Dance: Meaning and Makings (2017), for a discussion on the politics, poetics, and process of this groundbreaking duet, moderated by Gillian Jakab, Gagosian Quarterly assistant editor and Brooklyn Rail dance editor. To join, register at eventbrite.com.
João Menegussi and Calvin Royal III in Touché (2020), choreographed by Christopher Rudd. Photo: courtesy Matador Content
Video
Taryn Simon
Cutaways
Taryn Simon’s Cutaways (2012) is available online from June 23 through July 22 as part of Artist Spotlight: Taryn Simon. At the close of the taping of a video interview for Prime Time Russia in Moscow, Simon was asked to sit in silence and stare at the newscasters for several minutes so that the producers could gather additional footage for the editing process. Cutaways presents this footage as an autonomous work.
Taryn Simon, Cutaways, 2012 © Taryn Simon
Public Installation
Sculpture Milwaukee 2021
Theaster Gates
June 25, 2021–Fall 2022
Theaster Gates has been invited to serve as a guest curator for Sculpture Milwaukee, a nonprofit organization transforming downtown Milwaukee’s cultural landscape every year with an outdoor exhibition of sculpture that acts as a catalyst for community engagement, economic development, and creative placemaking. Gates worked closely with cocurator Michelle Grabner to select artists for the 2021 exhibition, entitled there is this We, with further programming to be announced.
Theaster Gates. Photo: Sara Pooley
Permanent Installation
Taryn Simon
The Pipes
Taryn Simon’s large-scale outdoor sculpture The Pipes (2016–21) will be on long-term view at MASS MoCA, in North Adams, Massachusetts, starting on June 26, 2021. What began as an oversize concrete instrument for a cacophony of global mourning in Simon’s work An Occupation of Loss (2016) will be populated by the sounds, collective call-and-response, and movements of a living public. The eleven structures that make up the installation—which Simon designed in collaboration with Shohei Shigematsu of the architecture firm OMA—offer the public an immersive experience and a sacred space for reflection, impromptu performance, and stargazing.
View of Taryn Simon’s The Pipes (2016–21) prior to installation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts. Artwork © Taryn Simon. Photo: Will McLaughlin, courtesy MASS MoCA
Museum Exhibitions
Opening this Week
Road Rage
June 25–September 20, 2021
The Church, Sag Harbor, New York
www.sagharborchurch.org
Road Rage brings together works by twenty-four artists who use the car as subject or material. Dating from the 1960s to the present, the paintings, photographs, sculptures, drawings, and animated film on display consider automobiles as tools of travel, consumption, and commerce, and as icons of wealth, class, leisure, power, destruction, and pollution. Work by Gregory Crewdson and Richard Prince is included.
Gregory Crewdson, Back Lot, 2018–19 © Gregory Crewdson
Opening this Week
William Forsythe in
Paradise Kortrijk 2021
June 26–October 24, 2021
Various locations in Kortrijk, Belgium
www.paradisekortrijk.be
Paradise Kortrijk, the second Kortrijk Triennial, places interactive works by thirty-two Belgian and international artists in various indoor and outdoor sites throughout the city. Born out of a desire to reflect on how to construct a better society, the festival presents myriad interpretations of the utopian dream of paradise. Work by William Forsythe is included.
William Forsythe, Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time No. 2, 2013 © William Forsythe. Photo: Dominik Mentzos
Opening this Week
Sarah Sze
Fifth Season
June 26–November 8, 2021
Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York
collections.stormking.org
To accompany Fallen Sky (2021), Sarah Sze’s new permanent outdoor sculptural commission at Storm King, the artist has created an immersive installation that spans fifty feet in length, creating a portal through the gallery that houses it. The work, Fifth Season (2021), considers landscape as a timeless preoccupation of artists but refuses the impulse to present the natural world as comforting or coherent, instead depicting it as fragile and in flux.
Sarah Sze, Fifth Season, 2021, installation view, Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York © Sarah Sze
Closing this Week
The Human Body
Through June 26, 2021
Hill Art Foundation, New York
hillartfoundation.org
This exhibition, curated from the Hill Collection by Karel Schampers, examines the human body through figurative work from the last five hundred years. The installation spans two floors and visitors are encouraged to view the works from different levels and vantage points, creating a dialogue across diverse periods and mediums. The foundation’s collection of Renaissance bronzes is featured alongside works by artists such as Francis Bacon, Richard Prince, Jenny Saville, Rudolf Stingel, and Andy Warhol.
Installation view, The Human Body, Hill Art Foundation, New York, April 29–June 26, 2021. Artwork, left to right: © Jenny Saville, © Richard Prince, © Ron Mueck, Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens. Photo: Matthew Herrmann