iGagosian · Chelsea
Deana Lawson
This exhibition has ended.
Deana Lawson's first solo exhibition with the gallery, at 541 West 24th Street: mirror-framed photographs and holograms from her Edge Control series, which reimagines beauty-supply-store surveillance imagery.
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The pictures started life taped to beauty-supply-store windows: grainy CCTV stills of alleged shoplifters, posted as a warning to other customers. Lawson blows them up to life size and frames each in black mirror, so you walk in and find your own reflection inside the frame, looking at the person on the wall.
The title is a gel for laying down baby hairs, one of the stores' most-stolen products. Lawson keeps the stills low-resolution, and some faces are masked or too blurred to read. Two holograms of Black women stand in the middle of the room, their bodies shifting as you move. Opposite the stills hang her familiar staged portraits of Black men and women at home, casually dressed or not dressed at all.
In the Guardian, Morgan Jerkins said the show "succeeds at capturing the extreme vulnerability" of people watched without knowing it. It is one room at 541 West 24th Street, free, Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 6pm, until 24 October.
Look for
The mirror-framed surveillance stills
Life-size, low-resolution shoplifter photos in luminous black mirror frames, so your own reflection sits in the picture with them.
The two holograms
In the middle of the room, two holograms of Black women whose bodies shift depending on where you stand.
The portrait wall
Opposite the stills, Lawson's staged portraits in private rooms, including a man with a busted eye posing with others in a living room.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Cheap Culture
- Rainy Days
With kids
Entry is free. The portrait wall includes nude figures, so decide for yourself about younger children.
Also at Gagosian
On now nearby
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Image credits
8
- GagosianKazuhisa Otsubo (Flickr/cytech), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- David Byrne: Stairwell DrawingsDavid Byrne / Pace Gallery
- David Lamelas: The MachineJoeyvandernaald, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Anna Maria Maiolino. ANNA—And the Infinite LineCourtesy of Hauser & Wirth
- Pace GalleryPace Gallery
- Dia ChelseaFound5dollar, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Hauser & WirthJim.henderson, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- David ZwirnerCourtesy David Zwirner