Taryn Simon
Taryn Simon
Taryn Simonis a multidisciplinary artist who has worked in photography, text, sculpture and performance. Her practice involves extensive research, guided by an interest in systems of categorization and classification. Simon’s works have been the subject of monographic exhibitions at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Permanent collections include Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, the Guggenheim Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionArtist
CountryUnited States of America
You come to the photograph as an aesthetic object with no context... Then you step in and read the text and then out again to revisit the image in a completely different way. I'm interested in that space between text and image. The piece becomes the negative space between the two.
I do seem to try to make things harder and harder for myself. In some perverse way, obstacles interest me and I'm drawn to projects that end up being incredibly laborious.
Archives exist because there's something that can't necessarily be articulated. Something is said in the gaps between all the information.
Photography threatens fantasy.
My work is drawn to the political but avoids an agenda. There is no inherent critique or support.
I'm interested in the murky areas where there are no clear answers - or sometimes multiple answers. It's here that I try to imagine patterns or codes to make sense of the unknowns that keep us up at night. I'm also interested in the invisible space between people in communication; the space guided by translation and misinterpretation.
The majority of my work is about preparation.
In my work, I construct texts and images. Between those two points the blur occurs. Each is altered by the other again and again, back and forth.
There is no truth in photography. One can't reproduce an absolute truth. That said, I don't see [my photographs] as being any less truthful than any other photographs.
...photography's history is bound to the mistake, to the accident.
I want to see everything. I guess the positive version of not seeing or not knowing would be preservation of fantasy.
The photograph doesn't claim to be a participant, or to know, or to be a club member of whatever it's documenting - photography is more demanding when it doesn't pretend to know.
I'm designing a seductive frame to attract an audience to a subject they would otherwise ignore. And that's what I do in all of my photography - give a stage to things that wouldn't normally receive that stage.
Simulations directly relate to the process of and complications in photography. They also overtly create layers of fantasies, myths and interventions... The simulation confuses the idea of a truth. I've always been interested in this kind of theater and illusion at the foundation of belief.