Nan Goldin

When you forget to look at someone close to you for a long time and suddenly you look, it’s a revelation. That’s been my relationship to the world and what I’ve been photographing since I was fifteen.
—Nan Goldin

Gagosian is pleased to announce an exhibition at the gallery in Basel featuring Nan Goldin’s video Sirens (2019–20) and large-scale photographs.

Sirens, the first work by Goldin made exclusively from found video footage, is accompanied by a haunting score by Mica Levi. Echoing the call of the Sirens from Greek mythology, who lured sailors to their untimely deaths on rocky shores, this entrancing work visually and acoustically suggests the euphoric experience of being high.

The nine color photographs on view in Basel alongside Sirens were taken between 1979 and 2021. In the first room are photographs that pay homage to the sensuality of the female body. These intimate depictions allow the viewer to observe the works’ subjects without the women gazing back, questioning whether we can experience any subject without an element of confrontation. Thora at my vanity, Brooklyn (2021), from Goldin’s most recent series of portraits of her beloved friend, incorporates the chiaroscuro of Renaissance paintings. C on the wall, Bangkok (1992), one of many shots derived from Goldin’s expansion of her circle of transgender friends to Southeast Asia, captures its subject in a raw, revealing image of the person behind the performance.