Visiting artist and scholar lecture series | Daniel Gordon

April 21 | 6:30 p.m. | Grant Street Studios

The Visiting Artist Lecture Series and the Photography Area are honored to host Daniel Gordon for a public lecture at 6:30 p.m. on April 21st. Gordon is known for photography and sculpture that employs appropriation and reproduction in order to question the nature of the image-object relationship. Melding optical illusion, pastiche, mixed media and a recalibration of analog processes, Gordon consciously reframes what it means to have a photographic practice.

Gordon's oeuvre is a labyrinth built from formalist notions of color, form, line and composition. His photographs are comprised of disparate images that have been collapsed and recontextualized; modernist and classical references are remixed to bombastic effect, with plants and vessels repeated within the images to create spatial architecture for his imagined scenes. Exploring the theoretical traditions established by John Berger and Marshall McLuhan, Gordon challenges the false mystification of art historical titans such as Picasso and Matisse, all while celebrating the visual experience. Bringing together memento mori, portraiture and still life, Gordon deftly synthesizes the history of image making. "It's a fiction and a truth at the same time," says Gordon, whose early Flying Pictures series (2001-2004) created whimsical illusions of the artist in mid-flight.

Gordon holds a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Yale School of Art, and he lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has staged solo exhibitions at Kasmin, New York (2023); Nazarian/Curcio, Los Angeles (2024); Huxley-Parlour, London (2024); Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston, MA (2021-22); Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX (2019) and Foam Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2014), among other venues. He has participated in several additional museum exhibitions at the Berkshire Botanical Gardens, Stockbridge, MA (2022); J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Pier 24, San Francisco (2016); MoMA P.S. 1, Queens, New York (2010); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009). His work is included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Pier 24, San Francisco; Foam Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and the VandenBroek Foundation, Lisse, Netherlands. 

Artist's website

Artist's Instagram

Image: Daniel Gordon, “Orange Sunrise With Flowers, Fruit, and Vessels,” Photograph, 2024.