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).