Summary
Gagosian hosts Deana Lawson’s debut gallery solo show in New York from September 10 to October 24, 2026.The exhibition debuts Edge Control, a series recontextualizing beauty store surveillance stills.Works include luminous mirror-framed photographs, glass holograms, and large-scale portraits.
Gagosian will present its inaugural solo exhibition of works by acclaimed artist Deana Lawson, opening on September 10, 2026, at 541 West 24th Street in New York and running through October 24.
The presentation features a dynamic selection of mirror-framed photographs, holograms, and recent large-scale portraits that collectively explore issues of personhood, surveillance, and control within late capitalist society. A central highlight is the debut of selections from Edge Control, a photographic series initiated in 2023 in which Lawson recontextualizes surveillance stills captured at U.S. beauty supply stores. Borrowing its title from both a gel used to lay down hairlines and the literal systems of image-based policing, the series reimagines surveillance imagery - marked by deep-horizon blues and greens - while intervening to protect the identities of those pictured.
Expanding on Edge Control, the exhibition also introduces new glass-encased holograms inspired in part by Philip K. Dick’s 1977 dystopian novel A Scanner Darkly and its conceptual "scramble suits" that obscure a wearer's identity. These futuristic works are presented alongside Lawson’s signature, highly detailed domestic portraits. Drawing structural inspiration from 17th-century Dutch paintings and family photo albums, her large-scale figures gaze directly at the camera, asserting a vivid palette of deep greens, mauves, yellows, and browns. Grounded in intimate collaborations between the artist and her subjects, the exhibition highlights the transformative potential of beauty culture and human agency against a backdrop of contemporary paranoia and widespread surveillance.
Gagosian NYC
541 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011, USA