Paradise: Douglas Gordon

‘Belongs to...’ are a rhythmic score of new paintings by Gordon, in which vital images, their material support, and the technique that generates them are transformed into elastic apparitions unfolding in real time and space. Gordon’ s new paintings utilize acetone printing to transfer provocative softcore images from early 1960s issues of Playboy magazine onto burnt, unlevelled, and asymmetrical canvases marked by biomorphic drips of wax, acrylic paint, and unknown liquids. The transfers dilute the visibility and definition of the images to the point they become a semi-transparent superfluous tissue evaporating through the interlaced threads of the canvas that both consumes and materializes them. The new paintings juxtapose the cyclical movement of time conducted by the intermittent appearance and disappearance of the images with a sense of change and extension implied by the vague contours and positions of the canvases and the flowing drips of wax and paint. The unpredictable topography is further intensified when observing the mirror panels against which the canvases are placed.