Douglas Gordon — Phantom — Yvon Lambert Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: April 15 → June 3, 2011

Yvon Lambert is pleased to present Phantom, Scottish artist Douglas Gordon’s sixth exhibition at the gallery. For this exhibition, the artist has produced all new work, including a neon and two installations.

At the entrance of the gallery, Douglas Gordon will display Unfinished, a new neon work in which the words “I am the centre of the world” have been willingly destroyed by the artist. The undestroyed section of the neon remains lit, representing the artist’s own vulnerability and exposure.

Further on, the artist has imagined a double system inside the gallery, dealing with the functions and malfunctions of memory through image and language.

The installation I am also Hyde will be on display in the first room of the gallery. Facilitating a constant dialogue between collective and personal memory, Gordon exhibits four hundred framed works to question his own vision of himself and the dark side of the human condition. The artwork is an autobiographical installation, with a distended notion of time, staged and presented as an open diary showing the artist’s images, photographs, drawings and personal belongings. For the first time in his practice, Douglas completely focuses on revealing his own story.

In the second part of the exhibition, Gordon will exhibit the installation Phantom that includes a video screen, a platform, mirrors, and a grand piano in complete darkness. The video within this installation is the result of a collaboration between Gordon and the singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright. In a direct, almost animal animalistic way, Douglas guides the audience in a metaphoric location for a mental and physical experience that borders on mystical. The grand piano and the mirrors arranged in the room emphasize the theatricality of the installation, emphasizing the effect of this eerie eye, which is Wainwright’s eye documented by Gordon. The visualization of these body parts creates a very disturbing reality that blurs the lines between violence and tenderness. The way Wainwright’s gaze is fragmented, multiplied, and paced, which is mirrored by his emotional music, takes the audience deep into a realm that vacillates between fascination, angst, desire and aversion.