A major exhibition – featuring the work of legendary photographer Nan Goldin – is slated to open in New York in late April. The show, which will be held at the Marian Goodman Gallery, will present historical images as well as new videos and photographs.
The exhibit, Nan Goldin: Memory Lost, is scheduled to run from Tuesday, April 27 through Saturday, June 12, and officials from the gallery said the show is the artist's first solo presentation in New York in five years.
Among Goldin's new works is an untitled series of pictures all taken in her home during the pandemic - after writer Thora Siemsen moved in and inspired Goldin to document her personal life.
"I was very lucky Thora came into my life when she did. I hadn't photographed a person in years. I was more inspired by the sky, or by going into my archive of tens of thousands of slides to make new pieces," Goldin told The New York Times Style Magazine. "It's very intimate for me to photograph someone. I need to feel a deep connection, and that can become deeper through the process."
The exhibit also includes a newly edited version of Goldin’s slideshow, The Other Side, as an analog piece for the first time in 14 years. The Other Side – named for the drag queen bar where Goldin hung out – was produced as an homage to her transgender friends, whom she lived with and photographed from 1972 to 2010. The photographs, which are among Goldin’s most well-known works, celebrate the “gender euphoria” of her friends.
In a 2019 version of The Other Side book, Goldin wrote that the work was "a record of the courage of the people who transformed that landscape to allow trans people the freedom of now. My dream since I was a kid was of a world with completely fluid gender and sexuality, which has come true as manifested by all those living publicly as gender non-conforming."
Also on display in the new exhibit are the video work, Sirens, made entirely from found footage from thirty of Goldin’s favorite films, and Memory Lost, a 2019 digital slideshow that recounts her battle with drug addiction and how it has affected her life. Memory Lost is accompanied by a score from composer and instrumentalist Mica Levi, and additional music by CJ Calderwood and Soundwalk Collective.
Since getting treatment, Goldin has sought to help others addicted to OxyContin, and launched the group PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) in 2017. The organization fights for progressive drug policy and harm-reduction-based healthcare.
"I narrowly escaped. I went from the darkness and ran full speed into The World. I was isolated, but I realized I wasn't alone," Goldin wrote of her struggle on the PAIN website.
A group of stills from Memory Lost is being presented as dye sublimation prints on aluminium for the first time in Goldin’s career. The process uses heat to transfer to infuse dyes into a sheet of pre-treated aluminum, and the original images were made during a time when film made photography more unpredictable.
"Technical mistakes allowed for magic; random psychological subtexts that could not have been created intentionally could make the subconscious visible," the gallery wrote.
The new exhibit will also feature Goldin's photographic series of large skies and landscapes - taken over the last thirty years during her travels around the world.
"The rich tonality and subtlety of these large images convey an ethereal, abstract quality that sits in counterpoint to the rest of the exhibition," the gallery wrote in a statement. "Goldin's skies float, unframed, evoking the enormity of the sky and her desire to photograph emptiness."
Goldin joined the Marian Goodman Gallery in September 2018. To visit the show in person in New York, schedule an appointment on the gallery's website.
