About
The camera is as much a part of my everyday life as talking or eating or sex.
—Nan Goldin
Emerging from the artist’s own life and relationships, and including herself as a subject, Nan Goldin’s work has transformed the role of photography in contemporary art. Her photographs and moving-image works address essential themes of identity, love, sexuality, addiction, and mortality. Uniting art and activism, Goldin has confronted the HIV/AIDS epidemic since the 1980s and today brings international attention to the overdose crisis.
Born in Washington, DC, in 1953, Goldin grew up outside of Boston. She left home at age fourteen, and at sixteen enrolled in the Satya Community School in Lincoln, Massachusetts, where she acquired her first camera. Goldin’s early black-and-white photographs, which convey the beauty, vulnerability, and joy of her friends in Boston’s transgender community, were initially shown in her first solo exhibition in 1973 at Project, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts. Attending Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts beginning in 1974, she would start working principally with Cibachrome prints and 35mm slides, taking photographs in saturated color.
Relocating to New York in 1978, Goldin began documenting members of her chosen family in a milieu of New Wave clubs, No Wave cinema, and post-Stonewall gay culture. Capturing moments of revelry and friendship, intimacy and loss, she titled this body of work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency after a song from The Threepenny Opera (1928) by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. Constantly evolving, it grew into a multimedia presentation of almost seven hundred slides accompanied by an eclectic soundtrack. Initially projected in nightclubs, it was included in The Times Square Show in 1980, the Whitney Biennial in 1985, and countless other museum exhibitions around the world. It was published by Aperture in 1986 as the first of Goldin’s many books and was recently reprinted for the twenty-first time.
#NanGoldin
Exhibitions
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Art Fair
ART SG 2024
January 19–21, 2024, booth BC06
Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Singapore
artsg.com
Gagosian is pleased to participate in the second edition of ART SG, with a selection of works by international contemporary artists including Harold Ancart, Georg Baselitz, Ashley Bickerton, Amoako Boafo, Dan Colen, Edmund de Waal, Nan Goldin, Lauren Halsey, Hao Liang, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Tetsuya Ishida, Alex Israel, Donald Judd, Y.Z. Kami, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Rick Lowe, Takashi Murakami, Takashi Murakami & Virgil Abloh, Nam June Paik, Ed Ruscha, Jim Shaw, Alexandria Smith, Spencer Sweeney, Stanley Whitney, Jonas Wood, and Zeng Fanzhi. The works on view, which embrace a wide variety of subjects and approaches, find artists infusing traditional genres such as history painting, portraiture, and landscape with new and surprising ideas that traverse cultural and temporal boundaries.
Gagosian’s booth at ART SG 2024. Artwork, left to right: © ADAGP, Paris, 2024, © Jonas Wood, © Rick Lowe Studio. Photo: Ringo Cheung
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
Art Fair
Frieze Seoul 2023
September 7–9, 2023, booth C14
COEX, Seoul
www.frieze.com
Gagosian is pleased to participate in Frieze Seoul 2023 with a presentation of contemporary works by gallery artists, including Derrick Adams, Georg Baselitz, Dan Colen, Edmund de Waal, Jadé Fadojutimi, Urs Fischer, Cy Gavin, Mehdi Ghadyanloo, Nan Goldin, Katharina Grosse, Jennifer Guidi, Thomas Houseago, Alex Israel, Rick Lowe, Takashi Murakami, Nam June Paik, Giuseppe Penone, Ed Ruscha, Alexandria Smith, Anna Weyant, Stanley Whitney, Jonas Wood, and Richard Wright, among others.
Coinciding with the fair is the arrival of Jiyoung Lee, who was recently appointed to lead the gallery’s operations in Korea. Lee joins Gagosian following nearly fifteen years based in Seoul working on behalf of both Korean and Western galleries. Her appointment builds on the gallery’s establishment of a business entity in Korea last year, and provides for expanded activities in the region.
Gagosian’s booth at Frieze Seoul 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Jadé Fadojutimi, © Jen Guidi, © Alexandria Smith, © Mehdi Ghadyanloo, © Rick Lowe Studio, © Jonas Wood. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Museum Exhibitions
Closing this Week
Dix und die Gegenwart
Through April 1, 2024
Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany
www.deichtorhallen.de
This exhibition, whose title translates to Dix and the Present, explores the work of Otto Dix (1891–1969) and the artist’s enduring influence. It focuses on the ostensibly apolitical work Dix created beginning in 1933, which was less aggressive than his radical and provocative paintings of the 1920s. His Nazi-era landscapes, commissioned portraits, and Christian allegories were instead subtle and subversive forms of contemporary social critique. The exhibition aims to reveal the shifting cultural and social parameters in the reception of Dix’s art, while also demonstrating how his oeuvre continues to fascinate more than forty contemporary artists. Work by Georg Baselitz, Glenn Brown, John Currin, Nan Goldin, and Anselm Kiefer is included.
Glenn Brown, The Holy Bible, 2022 © Glenn Brown
On View
ICP at 50
From the Collection, 1845–2019
Through May 6, 2024
International Center of Photography, New York
www.icp.org
ICP at 50 is a thematic exploration of the many processes that comprise the history of the photographic medium, drawn from the International Center of Photography’s holdings. The institution was established in 1974 and the exhibition offers insight into the breadth and depth of its collection which spans from the nineteenth century to the present day. Work by Richard Avedon, Nan Goldin, Deana Lawson, and Andy Warhol is included.
Installation view, ICP at 50: From the Collection, 1845–2019, International Center of Photography, New York, January 24–May 6, 2024. Artwork, left to right: © Nan Goldin, © Zanele Muholi, © Deana Lawson. Photo: Jeenah Moon, courtesy International Center of Photography
Opening Soon
Nan Goldin
This Will Not End Well
Opening October 2024
Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
www.smb.museum
This retrospective explores Nan Goldin’s photographic practice within the context of filmmaking. Over the years, she has created more than a dozen moving-image works composed of thousands of images, ranging from portraits of her friends to traumatic family stories about addiction and domestic violence. Embracing the artist’s original vision of how her work is to be experienced, the exhibition—presented in six unique buildings designed by architect Hala Wardé— focuses on Goldin’s slideshows and video installations set to sound and music. This exhibition originated at Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
Nan Goldin, Christmas at The Other Side, Boston, 1972 © Nan Goldin
Opening Soon
Nan Goldin
This Will Not End Well
October 5, 2025–February 15, 2026
Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan
pirellihangarbicocca.org
This retrospective explores Nan Goldin’s photographic practice within the context of filmmaking. Over the years, she has created more than a dozen moving-image works composed of thousands of images, ranging from portraits of her friends to traumatic family stories about addiction and domestic violence. Embracing the artist’s original vision of how her work is to be experienced, the exhibition—presented in six unique buildings designed by architect Hala Wardé—focuses on Goldin’s slideshows and video installations set to sound and music. This exhibition has traveled from Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
Nan Goldin, My horse, Roma, Valley of the Queens, Luxor, Egypt, 2003 © Nan Goldin