Artist Talk: Daniel Gordon

This event is free for students with ID and Aperture Members.

Aperture Foundation, in collaboration with the Photography Program at Parsons School of Design, of The New School, is pleased to present an artist talk with Daniel Gordon. Gordon is a Brooklyn-based multimedia artist who uses collage, sculpture, and photography to create fantastical portraits, nudes, and still lifes. Critics have drawn parallels between Gordon’s work and the paintings of artists such as Matisse and Cézanne, yet Gordon relies on the camera to ground his art. Photography transforms Gordon’s often fragile and ephemeral tableaux into works with solidity and permanence. Gordon has remarked that in his early work he was preoccupied with creating images that looked real, but he has since become less interested in mimicking reality. As something of a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein, Gordon revels in fragmentation and fracturing, the crumpling of paper and manipulation of colors; he draws attention to the fact that Photoshop is very much a part of his process. However, Gordon will never altogether cede his work to the computer, he explains: “Without seams and faults and limitations my project would be very different. The seamlessness of the ether is boring to me, but the materialization of that ether, I think, can be very interesting.”

Daniel Gordon (b. 1980, Boston; raised in San Francisco) earned a BA from Bard College in 2004, and an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2006. His notable group exhibitions include New Photography 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Greater New York 2010 at MoMA PS1. His work will be included in upcoming exhibitions at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida. He is the author of Still Lifes, Portraits, and Parts (2013), Flowers and Shadows (2011), and Flying Pictures (2009). He is the winner of the 2014 Foam Paul Huf Award, and exhibited his work in a solo exhibition at the Foam museum in 2014. Gordon is represented by James Fuentes in New York City and had his first exhibition with the gallery, titled New Canvas, in February 2017. He is the co-director of Downstairs Projects in Brooklyn, where he lives and works.

Image: Daniel Gordon, Still Life with Vegetables and Tulips, 2017. Pigment print. 59¼ x 75 in.

Aperture’s exhibitions and programs are also funded, in part, with support from the Grace Jones Richardson Trust, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

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