DOUGLAS GORDON

Born in Glasgow, Scotland
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

For HENZEL STUDIO, Douglas Gordon created a two panel composition as an homage to Courbet’s painting L’Origine du Monde.

Hailed as one of the most prominent artist of his generation to emerge from Britain, Gordon’s work spans across many different forms of media. Throughout his career he has utilized photography, text, sculpture, and—perhaps most significantly—film, with which he produced a series of video instillations based on iconic films including Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, John Ford’s The Searchers, and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Gordon’s work is meant to abstract what we think we know and understand, and through that
abstraction creates a new experience for the human memory to process and approach what it has previously witnessed. Throughout his artistic career Gordon has explored the complex depths of such issues as representation, authorship and ownership, and the imperfect fallibility of perception and memory. Popular culture plays a very important part in his work, as he often plays upon tropes and icons already familiar to the public and transforms them to alter our interpretations and associations. Through this exploration he has created new spaces in places where they were once difficult to find, opening us up to new ideas about doubt and morality.

His sources are diverse and often as familiar as they are new, and pose questions to the viewer about acceptance, perception, and understanding. Across medias his vision is not simply to make the known into the unknown, the familiar into the new; he takes up the mantle of cultural importance these pre-existing works have garnered and infuses them with a poignant and exhilarating creativity that leaves the viewers asking questions they might never have pondered. It is this ability to tap into the collective consciousness that makes Gordon’s work so powerful.

DOUGLAS GORDON
Untitled, 2017
Edition of 50 + 1 AP
Numbered
Accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity
Handmade (tufted) art carpet
2 pcs á 180 x 240 cm and 140 x 240 cm
(70,5 x 94,5 ins and 55 x 94,5 ins)
Custom size upon request
Wool (New Zealand) & Silk (Bamboo or Mulberry)