Daniel Gordon: Free Transform

Daniel Gordon

Succulents and White Orchid, 2023

Daniel Gordon

Turquoise Vase, 2023

These ambitious formal experiments utilize the genre of still life as a frame for the innovative representation of traditional subject matter. Plants (poppies, white orchids, desert rose), pottery (Aegean amphora, Japanese ikebana bowls, an English stoneware jar) and perishable food (peaches, artichokes, potatoes) act as the inhabitants of meticulously considered spatial constructions that probe the boundaries of painting, sculpture, and photography. While the proportions of Panoramic Still Life (2023) recall the confluence of a classical frieze, Succulents and White Orchid (2023) is split down the middle—equally reminiscent of a glitch in a digital file and the dividing space between two stretched canvases in a painted diptych. Still in others, the pixelation and degradation of the images, rendered in supercharged color, create a contemporary take on post impressionist and fauvist painting of the 20th century. As if by wizardry, Gordon coheres these compositional modes from the very expanse of the visual universe.

Daniel Gordon is known for photography and sculpture that employs appropriation and reproduction in order to question the nature of the image-object relationship. Melding optical illusion, pastiche, mixed media, and a recalibration of analog processes, Gordon consciously reframes what it means to have a photographic practice.

Gordon’s process begins with sourcing found imagery—such as of a vase or a plant—from the internet or by taking pictures with an iPhone. Gordon creates print-outs of these images, which he then cuts and pastes onto a three-dimensional structure that mimics the form and scale of the same vase or plant, thereby reconstructing the depicted object in paper. The resulting objects, albeit seemingly improvised and crudely constructed, are meticulously fabricated. Gordon then arranges these stand-ins into various tableaux, which he photographs from a single, frontal vantage point.  

Gordon’s marriage of digital and analog processes results in chromatic, highly layered works that delight in both the obvious and the confounding elements of their creation. Seams and fault lines are left unhidden—a wry celebration of the artist’s hand that also acts to emphasize the material nature of both subject and object. This pixelation and degradation of the images, rendered in supercharged color, creates a contemporary take on post-impressionist and fauvist painting of the 20th century. 

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