Kim Gordon: Lo-Fi Glamour

The Andy Warhol Museum announces "Kim Gordon: Lo-Fi Glamour", opening May 17, 2019. "Kim Gordon: Lo-Fi Glamour" will mark the first solo, North American museum exhibition for Kim Gordon. A veteran of the avant-garde music scene and the co-founder of Sonic Youth, Gordon is hailed as a music icon. Her work as a visual artist, which has run parallel to her music career, has yet to be fully explored.

This project encompasses two separate but integrated components: a survey exhibition of Gordon’s paintings, drawings and sculpture, and a commissioned score titled "Sound for Andy Warhol’s Kiss" for Warhol’s 1963–64 silent film Kiss—Warhol’s hour-long silent film featuring fourteen couples: Naomi Levine, Pierre Restaney, Gerard Malanga, Jane Holzer, Philip van Rensselaer, Charlotte Gilbertson, John Palmer, Andrew Meyer, Mark Lancaster, Ed Sanders, Rufus Collins, Marisol, Harold Stevenson, Steven Holden and unidentified others.

In interviews and in her memoir "Girl in a Band", Gordon cites Warhol as an early artistic influence and a source of inspiration, specifically the lo-fi glamour of his studio, the Silver Factory, and the multidisciplinary approach of his artistic practice. “I was interested in the lo-fi take on popular culture that Andy Warhol represented,” says Gordon in a 2013 interview with W Magazine.

The exhibition layout will feature new, never-before shown figure drawings, along with sculptures that highlight the eroticism and elegance of Warhol’s "Kiss". The exhibition will also highlight Gordon’s persistent use of language in her paintings with obscure band names in her Noise Name paintings, and phrases lifted from the media for her "Twitter Paintings".

In conjunction with the score commission "Sound for Andy Warhol’s Kiss", a limited-edition vinyl double LP will be released. The LP, recorded live in The Warhol theater on August 1 and 2, 2018, includes the sound score by Kim Gordon, Bill Nace, Steve Gunn and John Truscinski. It will feature three sides of audio on clear vinyl, with a silkscreen still image from the film Kiss on the fourth side of the record, and an inserted booklet featuring work from the "Kim Gordon: Lo-Fi Glamour" exhibition. An insert of essays will accompany the vinyl.

To complement the exhibition, a schedule of public programs are being organized and will be announced at a later date.

This project is co-curated by Jessica Beck, Milton Fine curator of art, and Ben Harrison, curator of performing arts & special projects.

"Kim Gordon: Lo-Fi Glamour" is generously supported by Alexa and Adam Wolman.