Nan Goldin
Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
March 2 – April 29, 2023
NAN GOLDIN:
Memory Lost, 2020
Pigment print, 44 x 65 inches (framed) [111.8 x 165.1 cm]
© Nan Goldin, courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery
Fraenkel Gallery presents Nan Goldin’s fifth exhibition with the gallery since 1994. Memory Lost, the exhibition’s centerpiece, is a slideshow in which Nan Goldin explores the darkness of drug addiction through images and recordings from her extensive archive. The exhibition also features dreamlike photographs from Memory Lost, along with a recent series of intimate portraits made at home during the pandemic.
Projected in a darkened room, Memory Lost presents a haunting and emotional narrative comprised of outtakes drawn from Nan Goldin’s archive of thousands of slides. Depicting scenes from her life and circle of friends, the 24-minute piece recounts the pain and fleeting moments of beauty in life lived through the lens of addiction. Presented for the first time on the West Coast, the piece includes a score commissioned from composer and musician Mica Levi, with additional music by CJ Calderwood and Soundwalk Collective, interwoven with Nan Goldin’s own voice, answering machine tapes from the 1980s, and contemporary interviews.
The still photographic prints from Memory Lost convey Nan Goldin’s distinct sensibility with mysterious depictions of skies, beaches, animals, and crowds. Often blurred or overexposed, the images suggest luminous fragments from a partially remembered past.
The most recent works in the exhibition were made at home during quarantine in 2020-21, portraying writer Thora Siemsen, who moved into Nan Goldin’s apartment early in the pandemic. Tender, intimate, and quiet, the photographs exhibit the artist’s singular understanding of chiaroscuro, and mark Nan Goldin’s rare return to portraiture.
Nan Goldin’s slideshows are the subject of a major touring retrospective, This Will Not End Well, organized by Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and traveling to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; and Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. In 2017, Nan Goldin co-founded the group P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), seeking to address the ongoing opioid epidemic by targeting the pharmaceutical companies that have profited from it. She is the subject of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, the award-winning 2022 film directed by Laura Poitras, which follows the artist and P.A.I.N.’s fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for their role in the drug crisis. Her work has been the subject of major touring retrospectives organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and by Centre Pompidou, Paris and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; and solo exhibitions at the Louvre, Paris, and Tate Modern, London, among others. Goldin’s work is in the collections of major institutions around the world. Awards include inclusion in the French Legion of Honor, the Hasselblad Foundation International Award, the Edward MacDowell Medal, and the Kathë Kollwitz Award.
FRAENKEL GALLERY
49 Geary Street, 4th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94108
