Gagosian Gallery

PAST EXHIBITION

Douglas Gordon: self-portrait of you + me

October 31, 2007—December 15, 2007

Gordon is a conjurer of collective memory and perceptual surprise, wielding as his tools the everyday commodities of popular culture: Hollywood films, found scientific footage, photographs of rock stars, or poetic and ambiguous phrases. Into his diverse body of work, which includes video, sound, photographic objects, and texts, Gordon skilfully infuses a combination of wit and dread, manipulating viewers' reactions to the familiar. An early example, his 24 Hour Psycho (1993) slowed down and protracted Alfred Hitchcock's legendary 1960 film into a full day's duration, drawing out the horror until it ceased to be suspenseful.

Gordon's Blind Stars (2002) featured publicity photographs of mid-century movie stars in which the sitters' eyes were replaced by expressionless black, white or mirrored surfaces. His Bond Girl portraits (2006) comprised more dramatically desecrated visages of the James Bond film actresses, yet their cut and burned remains still packed a seductive punch. The most recent self-portraits allude to Gordon's uneasy affinity for Andy Warhol, which has often impacted the content and tone of his work. Warhol's immortalized cultural icons here as charred, browned bits of commercial reproductions floating on mirrored backgrounds, singed remnants of the heroic originals that nonetheless possess an eerily powerful presence. Gordon's portraits underscore Warhol's phenomenal resonance in today's art world, while capturing the self-reflexive nature of the post-Warholian period.

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