Artist currently in Berlin: Douglas Gordon

Douglas Gordon is among the most famous artists the contemporary world has to offer. The article “Douglas Gordon and Cinema as Art”; here is just a brief explanation of why the presentations briefly outlined below are quite appealing to any art-loving Berliner:

Douglas Gordon's art has been featured in well over 100 solo exhibitions, well over 500 group exhibitions, and numerous screenings and performances in virtually all major art centers of the world since the mid-1980s.

The most prominent public collections in the world's art capitals naturally have a work of art by Douglas Gordon on display, except for Berlin (after all, one of the artist's adopted homes); they don't have money for art, they have a major international airport.

However, since Douglas Gordon a residence in Berlin since 2008 , Berliners can see something of his work more often, and not infrequently for free:

Douglas Gordon has just participated in the happening by the Viennese artist group Gelatin at the Schinkel Pavilion in Berlin: The four Gelatin artists Wolfgang Gantner, Ali Janka, Florian Reither and Tobias Urban had invited people to a happening called “Gelatin in Discursive Construction versus Communicative Deconstruction with…” at the end of September 2013.

Here, using balloons and prepared materials (a chair with a stuffed sack on the seat, a table with a booming portable radio, models of cardboard houses, a stuffed owl), and employing many plastered cloths, colorful paper, and shredded ties, they created art, possible and impossible sculptures, and the audience was right in the middle of it.

Gelatin had also invited fellow artists to the Schinkel Pavilion to create the sculptures together; on the first day of the event, Martin Ebner, Kris Lemsalu and Thomas Zipp actively participated; on the following days, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Karl Holmqvist and Douglas Gordon were also present, who installed a fog machine that from then on made the already finished or still in progress sculptures disappear in dense clouds at unpredictable intervals.

The event was short, as was the exhibition afterwards (September 25th to October 11th, 2013), but there are four videos on YouTube where you can follow the creation of the sculptures live:

A little more “Douglas Gordon” can be seen until November 16, 2013 in the group exhibition “Bald Eagle” , which deals with the unpleasant downsides of American culture and technology; against the backdrop of the recently discovered surveillance machinery, an exhibition that could hardly be more topical.

The title of the exhibition refers to the work “Bald Eagle”, an unassuming little painting by Rodney McMillian, whose portrait of a dead canary manages without much commentary…

Here, 18 very different works are shown, by the following 18 artists: Edgar Arceneaux, Mike Bouchet, Christoph Büchel, Jason Dodge, Douglas Gordon, Jens Haaning, Emily Jacir, Sejla Kamerić, Rodney McMillian, Gianni Motti, Cady Noland, Martha Rosler, Santiago Sierra and Heimo Zobernig.

Douglas Gordon contributes another artwork that, at first glance, appears truly peaceful: an innocent white coffee service on a closed piano, with an apparently frequently used samovar beside it. Home sweet home, sheer coziness – were it not for the seemingly ready-to-fire weapon lying in the middle of this arrangement, a Russian assault rifle (Douglas Gordon, “sketch for ak-47 samowar”, 2012).

“Bald Eagle”, “Sammlung Haubrok” in the “Fahrbereitschaft”, Herzbergstr. 40-43, 10365 Berlin, information about the artworks, opening hours etc. at www.haubrok.org/projects/bald_eagle.