- Venue
- National Galleries of Scotland
- Location
Douglas Gordon is no longer human. The Glasgow born, New York residing artist is now a vampire feeding from the memory of artists, actors, composers, soccer players and filmmakers: Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp; Scorcese's Taxi Driver and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Vertigo; from the Hollywood of Garbo and Brando but in 100 Blind Stars (2002) their eyes are obliterated or burned in a challenge to desire itself; from the shock horror of The Exorcist; Gordon even feeds from the memory of an elephant, in the elegantly considered installation Play Dead; Real Time (2003), we witness the elephant acting out its circus trained trick of playing dead, collapsing in slow, meticulous movements and achieving its fictionalized "death". Gordon feeds on its fabled memory, that an elephant never forgets, even in death.
Gordon’s memory consumption consumes itself: masses of footage is presented, his own video archive showing everything he has done: transforming himself from normal man to hideous monster, porno 8mm films, documentation of post-traumatic stress disorder, his own hand and arm being shaved ritualistically in preparation for something unspeakable, a hand clad in a rubber glove suggestive of a more sadistic penetration. It’s Gordon at a glance and a kind of statement about how everything becomes television eventually, even art.
If Gordon is a vampire then he certainly never shies away from mirrors. The imposing building that houses the retrospective is clad in mirrors allowing glimpses of work between the extensive galleries that are presenting Gordon's installations. The experience is a mesh of disorientating flickers and shadows, of sounds and soundtracks modulating in constant murmurs and silences. The walls of the galleries are resolutely black. It’s a veneer of the charnel house, punctuated with mirrors, reflecting work and the audience, presence and absence. In Gordon’s world mirrors are death. We even see a mirror as 24 Hour Psycho (1993) plays out on its screen (notably at the wrong speed, more like 18 Hour Psycho). Hitchcock’s masterpiece is currently showing Janet Leigh/Marion Crane standing in front of a mirror as she counts cash to buy a new automobile. We already know she’s dead: Marion’s impending murder and the late Janet Leigh’s passing. We see Leigh/Crane leave to meet her fate, we see the mirror reflect back the empty room. Longevity and absence play out in tandem here. It’s what Gordon seeks in slowing the work down to its 24-hour duration and what he fears most – the inevitability of death.
Superhumanatural suggests the transgressions of the human, the supernatural and scientific in unanimity, the fragility of the individual, the territory between good and evil. It reflects Gordon's condition as vampire of memory and perception. The experience and the severe glamor of it all made me consider him to be a modern day Bela Lugosi’s Dracula. A role that Lugosi claimed he would never be allowed to shake off. I enjoyed this show; it nevertheless made me want to seek out the break of day, the morning sunshine.
Visual artist and writer based in Scotland and the USA.
