Douglas Gordon’s new self-portraits series have an intimate dimension. It reflects the artist’s uneasy affinity for Andy Warhol which has often impacted the content and tone of his work. Warhol’s...
Douglas Gordon’s new self-portraits series have an intimate dimension. It reflects the artist’s uneasy affinity for Andy Warhol which has often impacted the content and tone of his work. Warhol’s immortalized cultural icons here as charred, browned bits of commercial reproductions floating on mirrored backgrounds, singed remnants of the heroic originals that nonetheless possess an eerily powerful presence. In this series, Gordon added a new element, using a straightforward method of image transferring with acetone. The images were all sourced from the Chelsea area with an emphasis on the fifties and sixties time era. They create a shadow-like interference, reminiscent of a gone era, of London’s history, of one’s adolescent fantasies. Douglas Gordon’s portraits underscore Warhol’s phenomenal resonance in today’s art world, while capturing the self-reflexive nature of the post-Warholian period.