KIM GORDON
2015-07-13In this new body of work, Gordon’s primary concern is the radical change in the landscape of New York City over the past several years. For the past 20 years Chelsea has been a center of urban renovation, including the opening of the highline in 2009. Small parks appear randomly in the middle of a street. Outdoor sculptures often accompany the arrangements. The new lushness of New York would seem to reimagine NYC as a city for the people, as well as a more attractive landscape for new consumers.
Gordon’s work upends this notion of beauty, exploiting its inherent artifice. New condo developments are named with boardroom idealism – The Rushmore, Fortress of Glassitude, Greenwich Lane – bestowed to evoke a desirable and ineffable lifestyle. The exhibition’s floor paintings repurpose these hollow slogans onto crumpled canvases, makeshift eponyms inscribed with black paint. The painting of the show’s title “The City is a Garden” hearkens back to an East Village aesthetic found in the neighborhood’s funky community gardens. Here, at the entrance, it appears as an overturned emblem, the refuse of misappropriated ideas.
Opposite – The vessel, a performance, 2015
Exhibition runs through to July 24th, 2015
303 Gallery
507 W 24th Street
New York
NY 10011
