News / Taryn Simon / Events

May 24–June 8, 2023

This online benefit auction for Printed Matter features over sixty donated artworks—some of which were created especially for the fundraiser—by contemporary artists, including Richard Artschwager, Piero Golia, Adam McEwen, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Taryn Simon, and Jonas Wood. Proceeds from the auction, which is hosted by Artsy, will support the nonprofit organization’s mission to further the distribution, understanding, and appreciation of artist’s books and related publications.

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.

Simon’s case studies are meditations on the touching of opposites—order and disorder, civility and barbarism, violence and aspiration—in the inscription of the human condition.
—Homi K. Bhabha

In his essay “Beyond Photography,” Homi K. Bhabha elaborates on the themes, structures, and stories that comprise Taryn Simon’s A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I–XVIII (2008–11), a collection that is at once cohesive and arbitrary, mapping the relationships among chance, blood, and other components of fate. The essay is available for online reading from June 23 through August 31 as part of Artist Spotlight: Taryn Simon.

Democracy needs visibility, accountability, light. It is in the unseen darkness that unsavoury things huddle and grow.
—Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie discusses Taryn Simon’s An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, which depicts objects, sites, and spaces that are integral to America’s foundation, mythology, and daily operations but that remain inaccessible or unknown. His text is available for online reading from June 23 through August 31 as part of Artist Spotlight: Taryn Simon.

In the end, what interests me most in this story is not the absoluteness of censorship but rather the way this particular system provides a set of constraints which, like most constraints, can be short-circuited to different effect. Certain panels may not have entered China, but the images and information they contain could not be kept out.
—Philip Tinari

Philip Tinari, director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), describes a 2013–14 presentation of Taryn Simon’s A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I–XVIII at UCCA Beijing. This text is available for online reading from June 23 through August 31 as part of Artist Spotlight: Taryn Simon.

Monday, March 29, 2021, 7pm EDT

Join Taryn Simon and writer and photographer Teju Cole as they reflect on Simon’s artistic practice and creative process. An award-winning novelist, Cole encountered Simon’s exhibition Paperwork and the Will of Capital in a Brussels gallery on the eve of the 2016 United States presidential election. When the results of that election left him shocked and in despair, Cole found himself temporarily unable to write. Simon’s art, however, continued to inform his thinking and writing process. He revisited her work with the essay “Capital, Diplomacy and Carnations” for the New York Times Magazine—a look at Simon’s masterful take on “powerful forces in the world that shape our day-to-day realities.” A live question-and-answer session will follow the talk, which is hosted by the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. To join the online event, register at osu.edu.

October 15, 2020–March 23, 2021

The benefit exhibition Ice and Fire features works by more than forty artists who have enduring relationships with the Kitchen in New York. Installed within the organization’s three-story space in Chelsea, which is currently closed due to the global pandemic, the three-part exhibition is viewable online. Proceeds from sales will go toward a planned renovation on the occasion of the Kitchen’s fiftieth anniversary, ensuring that the nonprofit space will remain a platform for artistic experimentation in its historic and beloved building. Work by Cecily Brown, Roe Ethridge, Mark Grotjahn, Alex Israel, Ed Ruscha, Taryn Simon, Mary Weatherford, and Christopher Wool is included.

Thursday, August 20, 2020, 5pm EDT

Join Gagosian for a trio of online presentations to learn about the ways Duane Hanson, Taryn Simon, and Jeff Wall approach photography as a generative practice and notions of truth and reality. Andy Avini will explain how Hanson’s figures take on new meaning in a photographic context, Louise Neri will speak about the intersection of photography in Simon’s multidisciplinary practice, and Graham Dalik will discuss how Wall changes photography’s relationship to truth through influence from other art forms. To join, register at zoom.us.

August 8–December 31, 2020
Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York
www.guildhall.org

Renowned American artist Robert Longo has mobilized sixty artists to donate artworks for a special benefit exhibition with all proceeds supporting Guild Hall, the historic multidisciplinary center that has for decades served the artist community of Long Island’s East End. In response to the ongoing impact of the covid-19 pandemic, All for the Hall includes painting, sculpture, photography, and new site-responsive installations. Work by Cindy Sherman and Taryn Simon is included

Wednesday, May 27, 2020, 8:30–10pm EDT

MoMA PS1 is hosting an internet variety show to honor Nicole R. Fleetwood and Taryn Simon for their support of the museum. Fleetwood curated the exhibition Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, and Simon recently joined the museum’s board of directors. The online party will feature live performances, music, and more. The event is free, but donations are encouraged. To join, register at moma.org.

You’re only as young as the last time you changed your mind.
—Timothy Leary

Gagosian is pleased to present Broadcast: Alternate Meanings in Film and Video, an online exhibition of artists’ films and videos viewable exclusively on gagosian.com. The exhibition will be organized into a series of “chapters,” each lasting two weeks. The first chapter begins on Tuesday, May 19, 2020.

Broadcast: Alternate Meanings in Film and Video employs the innate immediacy of time-based art to spark reflection on the here and now, taking the words of famed psychologist and countercultural icon Timothy Leary as its starting point. 

Thursday, March 5, 2020, 6:30pm
Gagosian, Britannia Street, London

Join Gagosian for a tour of the group exhibition American Pastoral. The show juxtaposes modern and contemporary works with historical American landscapes ranging from Albert Bierstadt’s depiction of the sublime in Sunset over the River (1877) to Edward Hopper’s tranquil seaside scene, Gloucester Harbor (1926). Gagosian’s Alice Godwin will focus on a select grouping of exhibited works that seek to challenge the idealized vision of the American Dream that has long been a rich topic of inquiry for artists in the United States. To attend the free event, RSVP to londontours@gagosian.com. Space is limited.

Opening reception: Tuesday, December 3, 5–8pm
December 4–8, 2019
Moore Building, Miami

Gagosian is pleased to announce The Extreme Present, the fifth in a series of annual exhibitions at the Moore Building in the Miami Design District during Art Basel Miami Beach, presented by Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch. The Extreme Present will explore artists’ reactions to the conditions of our accelerating and increasingly complex world. The title is inspired by The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present, a book by Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, published in 2015. Their provocative thesis addresses the rapidly evolving digital era, half a century after Marshall McLuhan’s groundbreaking study on technology’s influence on culture, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, in which he coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” Works in this exhibition explore concepts of media, communication, togetherness, and isolation.

Download the full press release (PDF)

Thursday, July 25, 2019, 12:30pm
Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, Colorado
www.andersonranch.org

Taryn Simon will discuss the way she directs our attention to familiar systems of organization—bloodlines, criminal investigations, mourning, flower arrangements—and makes visible the hidden contours of power and authority with curator Kate Fowle. To attend the event, register at www.andersonranch.org.

Tuesday, May 28, 2019, 6–7pm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
www.ngv.vic.gov.au

Taryn Simon will be in conversation with Gagosian director Louise Neri at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. The evening will include reflections on key bodies of work including An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Contraband, A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I–XVIII, A Polite Fiction, Paperwork and the Will of Capital, and her recent performance works An Occupation of Loss and A Cold Hole. The pair will be introduced by Simon Maidment, senior curator of contemporary art at NGV. The free event has reached capacity. To join the wait list, contact programs@ngv.vic.gov.au.

Taryn Simon will speak with Shannon Simon as part of the 2019 National Geographic Storytellers Summit. This multiday event in Washington, DC, celebrates written and visual storytellers whose craft changes people’s understanding of the world. Watch the Storytelling Symposium (January 16, 2019, 1–5pm) and Photography Seminar (January 17, 2019, 9am–5pm) live on YouTube.

Live auction: June 28, 2018
Banqueting House, London

Online auction: June 7–28, 2018
paddle8.com

Exhibition: June 8–27, 2018
Cork Street Galleries, London

Artists for Artangel is a special auction to benefit Artangel’s ambitious projects in contemporary art. For over thirty years, Artangel has worked with artists to produce extraordinary artworks of public import in unexpected places. Commissions by gallery artists include Rachel Whiteread’s House (1993), a negative concrete cast of a condemned terrace house in Bow, London; Douglas Gordon’s Feature Film (1998); and most recently, Taryn Simon’s highly acclaimed performance on the culture of mourning, An Occupation of Loss (2016 and 2018), presented in an astonishing underground location in Islington, London. For information on works in the auction or how to bid, go to www.artangel.org.uk.

April 17–28, 2018
Entrance on Essex Road at the corner
of Islington Green, London
www.artangel.org.uk

Following the critically acclaimed debut of An Occupation of Loss in New York in 2016, Taryn Simon will present a new iteration of her first major performance work in London next month. An Occupation of Loss, co-commissioned by Artangel and New York’s Park Avenue Armory, will be presented in a cavernous undiscovered space beneath Islington Green, opening April 17, 2018. To attend the event, purchase tickets at www.artangel.org.uk.

Thursday, April 26, 2018, 6:30pm
Anatomy Theatre, King’s College, London
www.artangel.org.uk

Taryn Simon will discuss the ideas and research that inform her performance work, An Occupation of Loss, with Frances Morris, director of Tate Modern. Following the conversation the artist will sign copies of her new book, published by Hatje Cantz, to coincide with the London installation. To attend the event, purchase tickets at www.artangel.org.uk. 

Thursday, January 25, 2018, 7–8:15pm
Pérez Art Museum Miami
www.pamm.org

Taryn Simon will discuss her multidisciplinary practice with Pérez Art Museum Miami Chief Curator Tobias Ostrander. After the talk, there will be a book signing with the artist. The event is free with museum admission. RSVP at www.pamm.org.

Friday, September 8, 2017, 12pm
Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
www.macm.org

As part of 2017 MOMENTA: Biennale de l’image, Taryn Simon, a participant in the biennale, will speak with the Ami Barak, the guest curator. The event is free with admission to the biennale and no reservations are required.

Each year at their annual gala, the Hirshhorn celebrates incredible artists from around the world who throughout their careers continue to challenge and inspire. This year Hirshhorn director Melissa Chiu is proud to honor thirty-one outstanding female artists—from pioneers of performance and video art to emerging painters and sculptors—whose collective contributions to the field have transformed the way we look at art and set the stage for generations of creative talents yet to come. Artists to be honored include Rachel Feinstein, Katharina Grosse, Taryn Simon, and Tatiana Trouvé. The gala will take place on November 6 at Lincoln Center in New York. 

Sunday, June 25, 2017, 3pm
Guild Hall, East Hampton, New York 
www.guildhall.org

On the occasion of her exhibition The Innocents at Guild Hall, Taryn Simon will introduce a panel discussion with Innocence Project Co-Directors Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck and individuals who have been exonerated. This exhibition coincides with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization that works to reform the criminal justice system. To attend the free event, RSVP at give.guildhall.org.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017, 6–11pm
4 rue de Ponthieu, Paris
www.art-rivedroite.com

Galleries located in the triangle d’or will be open to visitors after hours. A group exhibition including work by John Chamberlain, Walter De Maria, Edmund de Waal, Carsten Höller, Olivier Mosset, Steven Parrino, Sterling Ruby, Richard Serra, Taryn Simon, and Tatiana Trouvé will be on view at our Paris gallery.