Daniel Gordon

For most of his practice, Gordon's paper cutout objects have served as fundamental, yet ephemeral, elements in every work. More recently, however, Gordon's objects have found life as sculptures in their own right. For example, the artist's first ever public sculpture, Blue Poppies, eternalizes one of his paper cutouts depicting a vase with flowers in a feat of painted stainless steel and aluminum, transforming quotidian materials into a permanent monument. As one walks around the sculpture, one sees that the armatures are exposed, a testament to not only Gordon's hallmark wit, but also the significant involvement of the artist's hand within his photography practice. 

Gordon's oeuvre is a labyrinth built from formalist notions of color, form, line, and composition. His photographs are comprised of disparate images that have been collapsed and recontextualized; modernist and classical references are remixed to bombastic effect, with plants and vessels repeated within the images to create spatial architecture for his imagined scenes. Exploring the theoretical traditions established by John Berger and Marshall McLuhan, Gordon challenges the false mystification of art historical titans such as Picasso and Matisse, all while celebrating the visual experience. Bringing together memento mori, portraiture, and still life, Gordon deftly synthesizes the history of image making. "It's a fiction and a truth at the same time," says Gordon, whose early Flying Pictures series (2001-2004) created whimsical illusions of the artist in mid-flight.

Gordon holds a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Yale School of Art, and he lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has staged solo exhibitions at Kasmin, New York (2023); Nazarian/Curcio, Los Angeles (2024); Huxley-Parlour, London (2024); Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston, MA (2021-22); Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX (2019) and Foam Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2014), among other venues.