DANIEL GORDON
FLOWERS & SHADOWS
Limited Edition Portfolio
-12 original signed and numbered photographs (32,9 x 48,3 cm / 13 x 29 in - size of paper)
-128 page book (23 x 31 cm / 9 x 12 in )
Each photo is printed on Hahnemühle Baryta FB 350 gsm and protected by Terphane sleeves
The photos and book are contained in a labeled custom made canvas clamshell box
Each box is individually numbered
Edition of 8 copies plus 1 Artist Proof and 2 hors commerce
Price available upon request
Available end of 2011
© 2011 onestar press / CAMERA ARTISTS / the authors
Photos by Florian Kleinefenn
Flowers & Shadows
Daniel Gordon’s inclusion in MOMA’s ‘New Photography’ 2009 was a rare example of recognition by a cultural institution of a trend in art during the approximate period in which the trend occurs. That trend, the return of the manual or of the ‘hand’ in post-chemical ‘fine art’ photography opens another chapter in the sibling rivalry between the painting and the photograph.
In a modest Brooklyn studio Gordon builds constructions and maquettes in a late surrealist vein that exist to be photographed using an 8 x 10 view camera. Gordon culls a great percentage of his vibrant source material from the internet-archiving, cropping, and enlarging subjects and backgrounds until the fields of pixels suggest reductive De Stijl patterns. He is both set-builder and sculptor. Born into the digital age art history was less of a burden to contend with-Gordon’s generation negotiated the computer and constructed realties by the time they could walk; for them the photograph was no longer the conveyor of absolute truth, its pliable surface could be traversed with digital ease. For example, anyone may play with an I Phone application that liquefies a captured image at the casual touch-as the artist Lucas Samaras did in the 1970’s by manipulating still ‘wet’ color Polaroids.
If Gordon’s academic background reads as enviable (Bard undergrad and Yale grad) it belies a contrarian streak. The sensibility associated with Yale’s MFA Photography program is that of the constructed narrative as embodied by the deeply influential pictures and teaching of Gregory Crewdson. In contrast to seamless digitally orchestrated fantasies Gordon’s portraits, abstractions, and flower arrangements are cobbled together with foam core, staple gun, scissors, and tape. Transcending the collage/assemblages role as the preferred medium of outsiders, adolescents, or decadent hipsters Gordon’s tableaus are highly determined and witty. Images like ‘Statice Flowers’, ‘Tulips’, and ‘Zinnias’ (all 2011) have a faint but welcome odor of kitsch-as does any classical subject’s revival. All of Gordons’s vivid tableaus, once photographed, fall into a Beetlejuice-era Tim Burtonesque parallel dimension where pictures are turned into objects and back into a picture. His handsome silhouettes are projected from fragments of scrappy material that reveals a visual intelligence usually reserved for the canvas. Prioritizing intuition over craft and originating from impulses other than cinema they stand opposite of the meticulously fabricated images of Crewdson, James Casebere and Thomas Demand. Genuine melancholia threads through Gordon’s tabletop universes, especially in the floral images; for me they trigger a suppressed 60’s memory of weird Czech stop-motion animation shown to us in a high school English class. The grotesque often attends the collage-wasn’t Mary Shelly’s romantic monster a combine of body parts?
‘Flowers & Shadows’ the title for his Camera Artists collection has a distinct Warholian ring. Andy (“I Want to Be Matisse”) Warhol’s briskly composed still-lifes were central to his immense graphic oeuvre- but Gordon’s studio is no ‘factory’. Knee-deep in recyclable debris it’s a space for rejuvenation and to paraphrase John Baldesarri, the artist’s ‘place of power’. Daniel Gordon’s refreshing methodology and the 2-dimensional products of his energies situate him historically with sly Dadaists, dedicated revolutionaries, and heroic Cubists who first welcomed the camera into the modern studio.
Tim Maul for Daniel Gordon NYC 09/11
Below: the twelve photos composing Daniel Gordon's CAMERA ARTISTS' project.
Click here to see high resolution photos.
Check Daniel Gordon's images of his CAMERA ARTISTS's book below and discover the intimacy of his studio and process.
DANIEL GORDON
Born: 1980, Boston MA
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY
Education
2006 MFA, Yale University, New Haven, CT
2003 BA, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Solo and Two Person Exhibitions
2011 Wallspace, New York, NY (upcoming)
Daniel Gordon and Talia Chetrit, Tony Wight Gallery, Chicago, IL
2010 Claudia Groeflin Galerie, New York, NY
Callicoon Fine Arts, Thirty-One Days, Callicoon, NY
2009 Leo Koenig Projekte, New York, NY
Groeflin Maag Galerie, Portrait Studio, Zurich, Switzerland
2007 Zach Feuer Gallery, Thin Skin II, New York, NY
2006 Groeflin Maag Galerie, Basel, Switzerland
2004 Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX
Groeflin Maag Galerie, Basel, Switzerland
Group Exhibitions
2010 MoMA P.S. 1, Greater New York, Queens, NY
Wallspace, Swagger, Drag, Fit Together, New York, NY
Tony Wight Gallery, In a Paperweight, Chicago, IL
106 Green, Spring Fever, Brooklyn, NY
2009 Museum of Modern Art, New Photography Series, New York, NY
Rena Bransten Gallery, Complicity, curated by Leigh Markopoulos, San Francisco, CA
Derek Eller Gallery, Summer Group Show, New York, NY
Sunday Gallery, A Brief But Violent Episode, New York, NY
Cohen and Leslie Gallery, Photographic Works, New York, NY
Guild and Greyshkull, On From Here, New York, NY
Callicoon Fine Arts, All Suffering Soon To End, Callicoon, NY
Elizabeth Leach Gallery, A Fragile Reality, Portland, OR
2008 Redux Contemporary Arts Center, The Constructed Image, Charleston, SC
John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Stretching the Truth, Sheboygan, WI
Dumbo Arts Center, Fresh Kills, curated by David Kennedy-Cutler, Brooklyn, NY
Groeflin Maag Galerie, Like Watching a Train Wreck, Zurich, Switzerland
2007 Kantor/Feuer Gallery, Warhol &... Los Angeles, CA
Frederieke Taylor Gallery, New York, NY
Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois, I Am Eyebeam, curated by Lorelei
Stewart and Melanie Schiff, Chicago, IL
2006 Postmasters, Scarecrow, curated by David Hunt, New York, NY
Baumgartner Gallery, Yale MFA Photography 2006, New York, NY
Thomas Erben Gallery, An Inch of Truth, New York, NY
2005 Wallspace, Handmade, curated by Tim Davis, New York, NY
2004 CCS Museum at Bard College, Economies of Scale, curated by Pascal
Spengemann, Annandale, NY
2003 Taxter&Spengemann, Buy Contortions, New York, NY
Angstrom Gallery, Whim? , Dallas, TX
2001 Angstrom Gallery, Daniel Gordon and Robyn O'Neil, Dallas, TX
Bibliography
Ivan Lozano, Talia Chetrit and Daniel Gordon, Art Lies, No. 68 Spring/Summer 2011
Rebecca Robertson, Building Pictures, Art News, March 2011
Emma Allen, The New Collage: How Photographers are rewriting our stories, Modern Painters, November 2010
Emma Allen, Pulp Fictions: A Tour Through Artist Daniel Gordon’s Studio, Artinfo.com, October 2010
Jens Emil Sennewald, Im Biss Der Bilder, Art Collector, August 2010
Kristina Budelis, Off The Shelf: Flying Pictures, The New Yorker (Photo Booth Blog), August 12, 2010
Jens Emil Sennewald, Bild-Körper: Fotografie als Form, Photonews, June 2010
Joakim Borda, Generation Klick, Plaza Magazine, February 2010
Small Is Big, Pocko Times, London 2010
Tokion Magazine, collaboration with Anthony Lepore, Spring Fashion Issue 2010
Michael Weinstein, Review: In a Paperweight, Newcity Art, April 2010
Joanne Molina, Four Books That Consider The Future Of Art, Modern Painters, December 2009
Tim Noakes, Dazed Gets Playful With Five Artists Who Refuse To Grow Up, Dazed and Confused, Vol. 2 Issue #80, December 2009
NY Arts Magazine, The Fabricated Body, Vol. 14, Fall 2009
Olga Zapisek, The Illusionists, Chic Today, November 23, 2009
Michal Lando, The Nudes of Dr. Moreau, The Forward, November 20, 2009
“Goings On About Town.” The New Yorker, November 16, 2009
Karen Rosenberg, Into the Darkroom, With Pulleys, Jam and Snakes, The New York Times, November 6, 2009
Vince Aletti, Critics Notebook: Big Picture, The New Yorker, November 2, 2009
Martha Schwendener, Messing With the Medium, The Village Voice, October 14, 2009
“Heeb 100.” Heeb Magazine, Issue No. 22, Fall/Winter 2009
Katya Kazakina, MoMA Fast-Tracks Six Young Artists for ‘New Photography’ Show, Bloomberg, March 2009
Brad Philips, Daniel Gordon Interview, whitehotmagazine.com, March 2009
Talia Chetrit, Daniel Gordon Interview, toomuchchocolate.org, July 2009
Brian Libby, Change in an anxious world, The Oregonian, March 13-19, 2009
Josh Morgenthau, Fresh Kills + Josh Azzarella, The Brooklyn Rail, May 2008
Michelle Grabner, Critics Picks Chicago: I Am Eyebeam, Artforum.com, November 2007
Ethan Greenbaum, Daniel Gordon Interview, thehighlights.org, July 2007
Roberta Smith, Daniel Gordon: A World of Scissors and Paper That’s Captured in Photographs, The New York Times, June 30, 2007
Amoreen Armetta, Reviews: Daniel Gordon, Time Out New York, June 21-27, 2007
Courtney J. Martin, Critics Picks New York: Daniel Gordon, Artforum.com, May 2007
Sarah Schmerler, Tour de force, Time Out New York, Feb. 22-28, 2007
David Grosz, Taking Abstraction to its Logical Extreme, The New York Sun, July 12, 2006
Karen N. Gerig, Trügerische Wirklichkeiten; Daniel Gordon’s eigene Realität, Basler Zeitung, Kulturmagazin, Basel, Switzerland, September 28, 2006
Martha Schwendener, Critics Picks New York: Handmade, Artforum.com, January 2005
The Village Voice Shortlist, Handmade, February 2-8, 2005
Karen N. Gerig, Wirklichkeit auf Zeit, Basler Zeitung, Agenda, Basel, Switzerland, July 8, 2004
Die Besten: Kunst, Schweizer Illustrierte, Zurich, Switzerland, Nr. 28, July 5, 2004
Alexander Marzahn, Kunst mal hundert, Basler Zeitung, Agenda, Basel, Switzerland, June 17, 2004
Mike Daniel, Daniel Gordon at Angstrom, Dallas Morning News, Dallas, USA, March 26, 2004
Charissa N. Terranova, Faux real, Dallas Observer, Dallas, USA, March 18, 2004
Mike Daniel, Robyn O'Neil and Daniel Gordon, The Dallas Morning News,
Dallas, USA, November 16, 2001
Publications
2010 Thirty-One Days, self-published
Photo Journal, National Geographic, December Issue
Meta, Lay Flat 02
Being Fashion, Capricious, Issue No. 11
2009 Flying Pictures, published by powerHouse Books, Brooklyn
Portrait Studio, published by onestar press, Paris
2008 Columbia Journal of Literature and Art, Spring Issue
2007 North Drive Press, curated by Sara Greenberger Rafferty and Matt Keegan
Esopus Magazine, Fall Issue