Sam Gordon
48 Hours in Miami
February 14 – March 11
48 Hours in Miami: The Lost Kinetic World, Volumes 1–24 (2005–2008) and Sketchbooks (1995-2008)
Two parallel time lines: 48 hours of video captured with a point-and-shoot digital camera and stored on an iPod; 8 vinyl banners, printed at Kinkos, composed of 640 scanned sketchbook pages.
In both his video and banner works, Gordon employs consumer grade media tools and formats to archive immediate gestures—be they doodles or 15-second video clips—and coalesce them into sites of aggregation and experimentation.
48 Hours in Miami: The Lost Kinetic World, Volumes 1–24 (2005–2008) consists of thousands of video clips: art moments from the recent past edited into a kaleidoscopic, encyclopedic, temporal collage. An earlier 24 -hour version of this work, which is titled according to the city in which it is shown, has been exhibited in New York, London, and Berlin. The fluidity and specificity of its title reinforce the reflexive nature of the piece, a form of portraiture that takes the production and exhibition of artworks, as well as Gordonʼs own experience of art, as shifting subjects. The critic Colin Perry has described The Lost Kinetic World as “a vast archive of art
events, openings, performances and street life—a hyperactive dematerialization of the self: the I-am-you-and- you-are-we of culture.” In its latest incarnation, the work takes on a new urgency and historical dimension as the period of expansion, abundance, and exuberance it depicts is viewed in the context of a changed economic and political climate. Sketchbooks (1995-2008) comprises eight 5 x 12 foot vinyl banners, each printed with a grid of 80 facsimile sketchbook pages. These 640 pages, selected from over 2000 scanned to date, are arranged chronologically, their final size defined by the printer used to produce the banners. Gordon transfers the
intimate contents of a sketchbook to the public medium of a commercial display banner, offering the viewer a window onto his ongoing practice as it unfolds through time. As with his videos, however, this linear presentation belies the circuitous means by which Gordon develops and explores ideas.
The everyday paper trail of an artistʼs life, gathered into three-ring binders, becomes a concatenation of drawing, ephemera, photography, symbols, and text that inform and contextualize Gordonʼs production, while his peregrinations in the art world become the raw material for an epic movie. These are the things an artist does, from making visual notes for future pieces to engaging with the art around him. What Gordon has intuitively done is to make these very practices and experiences the work itself.
Text content from Kevin Bruk Gallery
Image from Ratio 3
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