Kim Gordon
May 7 - June 23, 2010
installation images selected works thumbnails
Press Release
Performing/Guzzling is both an installation of new paintings, sculptural objects, and works on paper by Kim Gordon and the title of a new artist's book of the same name published by Rizzoli/Nieves (New York/Zurich). The exhibition's opening at K.S. Art at 73 Leonard Street (May 7th, 2010 from 6:00 Ğ 8:00) consists of an installation, a performance, and a book launch.
Gordon's large-scale, black-and-white word paintings are drawn from her Noise Paintings series (begun in 2009) and consist of drippy, immediate, spontaneous gestures both writing and performing the hand-scripted names of experimental noise acts such as Pussy Galore, Secret Abuse, and Bad Adult. (Bad Adult is the name of an amplified noise collective consisting of Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether who inaugurate their own noise-making and other activities on opening night with the performance "The Promise of Originality"). A cacophony of dripping noise also permeates Gordon's watercolors on newspapers, obliterating the quotidian news with lyrical and performative stains and splashesÑpurposively ephemeral acts of erasure and celebrations of joyful nihilism. Rounding out the installation/performance are sculptural objects fashioned out of painted, glittering tree branches tangled with nylon stockings, again conjuring up a dark, sexual underbelly pulsing through the installation/performance/book.
Most of Gordon's work turns the conventions of performance on its head, whether it is in the artist's frequent reversals of the roles of rock star and fan, professional and amateur, or more generally through her examination of the roles of performer and audience. "I've always been interested in the relationship between performer and audience," Gordon notes. "I like the idea of making the audience the performer."
"It all transformed into a moment of art that performs itself, only to let it go again"--Jutta Koether
"Despite the fabled coolness of Kim's various surfaces-both as a visual artist, and performer-one is struck, again and again, by the depth of feeling behind her brushwork. She's a perennial youth discovering her material for the first time, always surprised by what it, and she, can do, which is to encompass and represent who we may be."--Hilton Als
BOOK LAUNCH: The monograph/artists' publication, Performing/Guzzling (2010) (144 pp) contains a loose, unbound print by the artist .
Kim Gordon attended Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. She is also a founding member of the New York musical collective, Sonic Youth since 1981. This is Gordon's second one-person exhibition at K.S. Art. The first titled Come Across was in 2008. In addition KS Art mounted a one-person installation of Gordon's work at The Armory Show in 2009. Other recent solo exhibitions include, The Noise Paintings at John McWhinnie, New York 2010, Sway: A Way In, Glaspaleis Heerlen, Netherlands 2008, Portraits #17-37, Iguapop Gallery, Barcelona 2007, Dead Already (with Jutta Koether) Reena Spaulings fine Art, New York 2007.