Sunday, October 31, 2010

Matthew Gordon is "Posing as an Echo Tourist"


Right Window Gallery at ATA

992 Valencia at 21st Street, San Francisco

Matthew Gordon is “Posing as an Echo Tourist”

November 7 - 28, 2010

Opening: Sunday, November 7th, 4 - 8 p.m.

Right Window is pleased to present a new installation by San Francisco-based artist Matthew Gordon.


Through e-mail correspondence with the artist, I learned that the exhibition takes its name from a conversation where Gordon misheard/misunderstood what was being said to him. He wrote the phrase down in a notebook, along with other phrases gathered in a similar manner, and stored it away for later use. Eventually it reappeared in a poem, but also as a locus of thought around which Gordon created a new body of visual work.


When I asked him to expound upon this idea of re-purposed text and ideas, Gordon responded via e-mail with the following:


two plexiglass boxes-

part almost then, part almost window,

contain a prismatic relationship

where mystical smog transforms into an accidental newscasting technique-


i watch my hands,

loosing a high stakes performance space,

fill a field with guilt-


i am enchanted by a copy and its double.


posing as an echo tourist,

my little heart is broken

by a tactical break-up spell

as the light shimmers on my invisible authors.


—And I’m sure we all know what that means.


- Kevin Killian

(The North Carolina Dermatologist, not the San Francisco based Poet/Playwright)


Matthew Gordon (b. 1979) is a recent graduate of the California College of the Arts (2009). He is the Co-Director, along with Mik Gaspay, of the quasi-fictional exhibition space/opinion FiSHSPACE Gallery. His work has been included in group shows at Patricia Sweetow Gallery (SF) and Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery (Portland, Oregon).