Douglas Gordon

This book examines the innovative work of thirty-four-year-old Scottish artistDouglas Gordon. Gordon is perhaps best known for installations that feature classic films bydirectors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, and Martin Scorsese. In each of these works theoriginal film has been manipulated--slowed down, mirrored by the use of split screen or dualprojection, or had its soundtrack altered--to emphasize the artist's own signature themes, whichinclude trust, guilt, madness, confession, deception, and doubling.Produced in conjunction with asurvey of Gordon's work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the book features essaysby MOCA assistant curator Michael Darling, exhibition curator Russell Ferguson, Scottish novelistFrancis McKee, and Guggenheim Museum curator Nancy Spector. Darling's essay places Gordon's work inthe context of the Romantic tradition. Ferguson's essay looks at Gordon's work to date. It focuseson the issue of trust as it weaves its way from early works such as the performance/installationTrust Me, through his tattoo and instruction works, to more recent works such as Feature Film, whichincorporates the Hitchcock film Vertigo. McKee compiles Gordon's literary sources into a kind ofhybridized text. Spector's essay focuses on the autobiographical nature of Gordon's oeuvre, showinghow he shifts between revealing details of his personal life--for example, the ongoing List of Nameslists all the people he has met in a given period of time -- -and obscuring other aspects of hisidentity. Designed by the studio of Bruce Mau in close collaboration with Gordon himself, this bookpromises to be the definitive reference on one of today's most exciting young artists.