Douglas Gordon

The idea of art is to be as free as possible...I retain the right to do whatever I want.
—Douglas Gordon

Gagosian Geneva is pleased to announce an exhibition by Douglas Gordon, coinciding with the opening of the “Biennale de l’image en movement” at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva.

One of the leading figures of his generation in the world of film and video art, Gordon’s installations, photographs, text works, and performances create the anticipation of certainty, only to subvert them. Here he presents a diverse selection of works from the last few years, including a projected film, a single-channel video displayed on a monitor, a carved wall text and several photo-based works.

In the film projection Twin Blades, made in Tangier in 2012, a symmetrical image shows an ornate Moorish stone archway, the entrance to the kasbah in Tangier, mirrored. Framed in each arch is a man intently sharpening a knife on a sharpening stone, employing the same manual technology and tools that have been in use for hundreds of years, handed down from father to son through generations.

The film’s location evokes the juncture between east and west. Currently a place of intense migration and a gateway for mass movement, northern Africa holds a mystique of crafts that are in danger of extinction, from knife-makers to snake-charmers and scorpion-hypnotists, all of which have been subjects in Gordon’s recent work. Self-portrait in Tangier shows a man’s hands sharpening a silver spoon; the rhythmic sway of the silver on the stone creates a hypnotic percussive soundtrack. Here, the silver spoon-a symbol of privilege-is transformed into something at once absurdist and sinister in its implications.

The wall text, Crash, with the words “we are all going to die,” has been carved directly into the gallery wall, with every other word reading backwards. The words were gouged out of the wall with a blade, and the resulting detritus left on the ground, drawing attention to the urgent and direct act of production, as well as to the portent of the work itself.

Douglas Gordon was born in 1966 in Glasgow, Scotland. He studied at Glasgow School of Art, and The Slade School of Art, London. Solo institutional exhibitions include the ARC Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France (2000); MOCA at the Geffen Contemporary, Los Angeles (2001, traveled to Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City; and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., through 2004); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2002); Van Abbemuseum, The Netherlands (2003); Museo Tamayo and Instituto Nacionale de Bellas Artes, Mexico (2003); Deutsche Guggenheim Museum, Berlin (2005); Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto (MART), Italy (2006); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006, traveled to Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires-Colección Constantini, Buenos Aires); British School at Rome, Italy (2007, traveled to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2007); Tate Britain, London (2010); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Germany (2011); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2013); Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris (2014); Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2014); Gordon will have an exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2017 and has been commissioned to make a major permanent work for the new Crossrail station at Tottenham Court Road, London in 2018. His critically acclaimed film I Had Nowhere to Go, about the avant-garde icon Jonas Mekas is currently touring International Film Festivals including Toronto, New York and Rio de Janeiro.

For further inquiries please contact the gallery at geneva@gagosian.com or at +41.22.319.36.19. All images are subject to copyright. Gallery approval must be granted prior to reproduction.