Douglas Gordon
Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Maag Area, Zahndradstr. 21m CH-8005, Zürich
9 Novemer 2013 - 1 February 2014
From the Press Release
The multi-channel video installation ‘Pretty much every film and video from about 1992 until now.’ will be shown in Zürich for the first time in Galerie Eva Presenhuber’ first-floor exhibition space at the Löwenbräu Areal. On the second floor is Gordon’s new, immersive photo and mirror installation “Everything is nothing without its reflection; A Photographic Pantomime’.
Functioning in encyclopaedic vein, 101 monitors, piled up on simple beer crates and arranged into a large-scale installation, present all of the video works produced by Douglas Gordon since 1992. ‘Pretty much every film and video from about 1992 until now. - has grown to encompass 82 individual pieces already, with new work constantly being added. The installation collates Gordon’s filmic oeuvre into a sculptural form that offers scope for a non-hierarchical view of the individual works. The 82 films and videos include iconic works such as ‘24 Hour Psycho’ (1993), ‘Between Darkness and Light (After William Blake)’ (1997), ‘Play Dead; Real Time’ (2003), along with new films such as ‘Henry Rebel’ (2011), ‘The End of Civilisation’ (2012) or the most recent three-channel work “Silence, Exile, Deceit: an industrial pantomime. ” (2013). This universal presentation, which, in contrast to Gordon’s famous immersive large-scale projections, is more reminiscent of a private video archive, offers insights into the central themes and formal strategies of his film and video works.
The second section of the exhibition traces out a connection to Douglas Gordon’s photographic and installation work. “Everything is nothing without its reflection; A Photographic Pantomime” is a new, complex installation, developed this year and made up of 360 photographs and mirrors. It presents travel photos, shots of landscapes and the world of nature, snapshots, and more private photographs. A mirror of the same size serves as a pendant to each photograph: a pair that is repeated on the opposite side of the exhibition space - inverted as if through the looking-glass.
Douglas Gordon, born in 1966 in Glasgow, Scotland, is one of the most influential contemporary video artists. Performances, sculptural installations and conceptual texts also number among his modes of expression. With his analyses and reconstructions of images drawn from collective memory and everyday culture, he lays bare fundamental patterns of perception. His oeuvre is dominated by polarities such as life and death, good and evil, guilt and innocence, as well as temptation and fear. Gordon won the Turner Prize in 1996 among many other art prizes and the following year he participated in the Venice Biennale. He has been Professor of Film at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main since 2010. He lives and works in Berlin and Glasgow.
