Cynthia Talmadge turns Rockefeller Center into the setting for an overflowing fiction

In Cynthia Talmadge's work, the intimate and the media-driven merge to the point of inseparability. Born in the United States and based in New York, the artist has developed a practice that moves between painting, photography, and installation to explore the emotional states that permeate contemporary culture. Her deeply narrative work draws on tabloid aesthetics, romantic imagery, and everyday rituals that reveal the most vulnerable—and sometimes dark—side of the American experience.

Over the past few years, Talmadge has established herself as one of the most singular voices of her generation, presenting projects that transform spaces and objects laden with meaning into complex emotional scenarios. Her new exhibition delves deeper into these tensions, inviting the viewer to explore a territory where memory, representation, and desire intertwine, reaffirming her interest in what lies between what is shown and what is felt.

Until January 10, Talmadge's new exhibition, currently on display throughout the Rockefeller Center campus, can be seen at 56 Henry in New York. Conceived as a site-specific installation, the show inaugurated the holiday season in one of New York's most iconic spaces, integrating the artist's meticulous and conceptually complex practice into the historical and symbolic fabric of the location.

This time, Talmadge revisits and expands upon the story of Alan Smithee, a recurring character in her work. The name—traditionally used by Hollywood directors who sought to erase their authorship from a failed film—is reimagined by the artist as an individual with a turbulent personal life and renewed ambitions. In Talmadge's universe, Smithee exists through objects that function simultaneously as props, vestiges, and evidence: fragments of a fictional biography narrated from the material remains he leaves in his wake.

The first act of this saga, Goodbye to All This: Alan Smithee Off Broadway , opened in 2023 at the Bortolami Gallery. There, Smithee appeared as a Hollywood director in decline, with over eighty films to his name, a tarnished reputation, and a recent divorce. Isolated in his Tribeca loft, accompanied only by his Maserati and a belated ambition, he aspired to reinvent himself as an experimental playwright. The exhibition at Rockefeller Center continues this narrative, but does so from a more strident and delirious register.

In this new chapter, the color palette explodes in fuchsias, sky blues, and acid greens. Capitalizing on an unfounded rumor linking him to Irving Berlin, Smithee decides to create a musical destined for massive success. Fueled by an accidental form of nepotism, he enters a relentless creative frenzy and writes a blatantly clichéd work that “borrows” motifs and melodies from Sondheim and other composers. Against all odds, The Sound of Manhattan becomes a commercial phenomenon. Smithee plays himself and, for a fleeting moment, once again experiences the warmth of public acclaim.

Success, however, is short-lived. Paranoia sets in: convinced that the stagehands and technicians are conspiring to kill him, Smithee spirals toward collapse. In a feverish state, he bursts into the Bemelmans Bar singing to astonished patrons, until he is taken to Bellevue Hospital. The delusion culminates when he decides to sabotage and boycott his own Broadway show.

Talmadge shapes this narrative through a carefully curated selection of sculptural elements. Distorted dioramas of the musical's stage occupy a display case in the lobby of 45 Rockefeller Plaza; in another, a bright pink Hollywood star bearing Smithee's name is adorned with a mask of comedy and tragedy. Programs designed specifically for the exhibition are scribbled and annotated in the character's handwriting, as if they had just sprung from an overflowing mind. Photographs of the costumes reveal the protagonist's pajamas: patched light blue checks, combined with green and pink trim, projecting a carefully rehearsed eccentricity.

Even within the precise narrative framework that Talmadge proposes, objects easily slip between categories: costumes and everyday clothing, set design and props, fiction and evidence. In Alan Smithee's world, boundaries are constantly blurred, because the character never stops playing himself.