Taryn Simon: Paperwork and the Will of Capital, Rome, April 14–July 8, 2016

Installation Views

Installation view. Artworks © Taryn Simon, photo by Matteo D'Eletto — Installation view
Artworks © Taryn Simon, photo by Matteo D'Eletto

Thumbnail - Installation view. Artworks © Taryn Simon, photo by Matteo D'Eletto

Works Exhibited

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*, 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 to conduct impact studies of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on neighboring countries, Khartoum, Sudan, August 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, *Agreement to conduct impact studies of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on neighboring countries, Khartoum, Sudan, August 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*, 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

Thumbnail - 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

Thumbnail - Taryn Simon, Agreement to conduct impact studies of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on neighboring countries, Khartoum, Sudan, August 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

Thumbnail - 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

About

These flowers sat between powerful men as they signed agreements designed to influence the fate of the world.
—Taryn Simon

Gagosian Rome is pleased to present Taryn Simon’s first solo exhibition in Italy, following her acclaimed exhibition at Gagosian New York earlier this year, and her participation in the 56th Biennale di Venezia in 2015.

Simon’s most recent body of work Paperwork and the Will of Capital 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). For Simon, photography has always been the vehicle for larger conceptual ideas; in Paperwork and the Will of Capital, her exacting attention to aesthetic and formal concerns has elevated the medium to the status of painting, as well as expanded her reach into sculpture for the first time.

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Taryn Simon

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