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Douglas Douglas Gordon
video video installa
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l. H l.
. .
. .
1 1
2
Among Among numerous group exhibitions, he
1. 1.
in in Glasgow, where, in addition to Cologne, he
nternational, nternational, the
I
at at the Vancouver Art Gallery will travel to
198
e e
in Vancouver, where where in Vancouver, he currently lives and works.
i
1997. 1997.
1966 1966
recipient recipient of Britain's
1999 1999
Since Since first his solo show in
1960 1960
1 1
Carneg
1996 1996
at at the Venice Biennia
1990. 1990.
1995 1995
to to
was was born in
2000 2000
was was born in
1988 1988
SkulpturProjekte SkulpturProjekte in Munster, and Documenta
Gordon Gordon undertook a graduate program at the Slade School of Art in
2 2
pturProjekte pturProjekte in Munster in
1997 1997
l
1988, 1988,
Educated Educated at the Emily Carr College of Art in Vancouver, Douglas has exhibited
Major Major funding for this exhibition is being provided by the Lannan Foundation
London London from
International International Trade of Canada, and the members of the Dia Art Council.
Douglas Douglas Gordon
was was included in the Sku
awarded awarded Premio
widely widely since his first solo show in
extensively. extensively. He was the
Stan Stan Douglas
continues continues to live and work. After studying at the Glasgow School of Art from
Columbia Columbia Arts Council, the British Council, the Department of Foreign Affairs and
with with additional generous support from agnes b
Toronto, Tilburg Tilburg Toronto, (The Netherlands), and Los Angeles.
tive tive that opened in February
the the
to to
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site site map and checklist
--+ --+
At At
n n
I
Texts Texts
Texts Texts
" "
.
1992. 1992.
1988. 1988.
1998. 1998.
1988. 1988.
(Vancouver: Art Art (Vancouver:
no. 49 49 no. (1997), 74. p.
Interviews Interviews by
Parkett, Parkett,
Texts Texts by Christine van
Stan Stan Douglas
Texts Texts by Lynne Cooke,
. .
in in
Texts Texts by Diana Augaitis,
Texts Texts by Christine van
1998. 1998.
(London: (London: Phaidon Press, 1998),
1999
1998. 1998.
Van Abbemuseum, Abbemuseum, Van
.
101-105. 101-105.
1999. 1999.
1994. 1994.
. .
pp
Texts Texts by Carol J. Stan Clover,
annover, annover,
Stan Stan Douglas
Vancouver: Vancouver Art Art Vancouver Gallery, Vancouver:
H
. .
Vancouver: U BC BC Vancouver: Fine U Arts Gallery,
1995, 1995,
Alone Alone Around the World,"
1998. 1998.
. .
"Sailing "Sailing
Ferguson, Ferguson, David Gordon, and Douglas Gordon,
Vancouver: Vancouver: Contemporary Art Gallery,
l l
Eindhoven: Eindhoven: Stedelijk
Special Special edition by Douglas Gordon. Texts Tobia by
Kunsthalle, Kunsthalle,
. .
: :
with with Diana Thaler, in
. .
Bern
1997)
Centre Centre Georges Pompidou,
: :
Hannover: Hannover: Kunstverein
Lisbon: Lisbon: Centro Cultural de Belem,
Gunma: Gunma: The Museum of Modern Art,
. .
(May (May
Samuel Samuel Beckett: Teleplays
London: London: Phaidon Press,
Paris
Vancouver: Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery,
conversation conversation
49 49
no. no.
28-29. 28-29.
36-83. 36-83.
pp. pp.
See See George "Discounted Wagner, Blights and Historical Evasions,"
his installation projects. Gordon's, Gordon's, his installation projects. by contrast, ranges more broadly in type and medium.
Most Most of work Douglas's in other consists media of of which series relate to photographs, the sites of
Stan Stan Douglas,
Gallery, Gallery, 1999), 89. p.
Stan Stan Douglas.
Stan Stan Douglas.
Douglas, Stan. Stan. Douglas,
Stan Stan Douglas: Television Spots.
Stan Stan Douglas: Monodramas and Loops
Stan Stan Douglas.
Douglas Douglas Gordon
Douglas, Douglas, and Scott Watson, and an interview with Diana Thater.
the the Edge of Painting.
Douglas Douglas Gordon.
Douglas Douglas Gordon
by by Stan Douglas and Miriam Nichols.
Douglas Douglas Gordon: Kidnapping.
selected selected bibliography
Stan Stan Douglas, George Wagner, and William Wood. Douglas Douglas Gordon.
Parkett, Parkett,
Stephanie Stephanie Moisdon and Nancy Spector.
Newman, Newman, Michael. "Douglas Gordon, Screen Memories: The of Trauma Time
by Thomas Thomas by Lawson and Russel
Stan Stan Douglas
1. 1. Both, for have example, drawn on the works of Alfred Hitchcock, well as as on early documentaries. Oscar Oscar van den Boogaard
pp. pp.
Charles Charles Esche, Friedrich Meschede, and Eckhard Schneider.
Bezzola, Russell Russell Bezzola, Ferguson, Richard Flood, and Douglas Gordon and Liam Gillick,
Assche, Assche, Peter Stan Culley, Douglas, and Jean-Christophe Royoux.
and and a conversation with Jan Debbaut.
Texts Texts by Stan Douglas, John Fiske, and Scott Watson.
Assche, Assche, Raymond Bellour, Pavel Buchler, Jeremy and Millar, a conversation with
notes notes
4. 4. Stan Douglas, project proposal, Dia Center for the Arts, New York, 1998.
3. 3.
2. 2. 5. 5. See and Gordon Liam Douglas Gillick, .
,
L.C.
,
trance
,
sometimes
,
euphoria
,
or subjecting it to more complex tech
,
Ann's husband comes to believe that Korvo
,
Nonetheless, through recourse to such motifs and
5
freedom and necessity; existence and nonexistence. Gordon has
;
's plot centers on two principals: Ann Sutton, the wife of a wealthy psy
Preminger
chiatrist who suffers from insomnia and kleptomania, and David a Korvo, hypnotist
sure, Korvo plans to hypnotize Ann and send her to Randolph's house where she
actually committed the murder under the influence of which hypnosis, gave him the strength to leave his hospital bed where he was recovering from an operation (the source of his perfect The alibi). police take Ann to the scene of the crime so that her husband can attempt to reconstruct the event. Realizingthat incriminating
who persuades her to undergo his treatment after saving her from being charged with theft. In order to cover up his murder of socialite Theresa from Randolph, whom he had extorted large sums of money before she threatened him with expo impact, mimicking the impact, act of on whichhypnosis the film's plot turns, while thejarring, will be arrested for the crime. Although he had initially and falsely suspected his rending rhythm of its address conjures that required to effect violent a abreaction wife of having an affair with Korvo
into a fully coherent if illogical or space, a single, unified entity.Often a new reality
evidence remains there that would reveal him to be the real killer, Korvo once again returns under hypnosis to the where house, he finally succumbs. point: fluctuating, elusive, subliminal, it evokes a consciousness resistant to the
Psychic disorder is at once the key to this narrative and a subject at the heart of
splitting apart to insist on dual contradictory points of sometimes view, dissolving projection, doubling, inverting, repeating supervenes over the inverted pair of images,a reality that metamorphoses out of
The stroboscopic flicker in Gordon's installation engenders a strong visceral
Gordon's art, since it provides the occasion, in works based sometimes in fact, The reflected symmetries of the double projection similarly serve to restructure sometimes in fiction, for a study of fundamental existential dilemmas: between vision; for the flow of enantiomorphic images constantly oscillates
niques, as niques, found And, here. although his subjects frequently include split person the the seam, junction between the two frames, and conjures yet a third vantage alities, doppelgii.ngers,and twins, he claims that he doesn't believe in dichotomies, even if he is obsessed them. by twin claims of hypnosis and psychoanalysis. aphoristic form he gives to incisive, means, altered which states, imprint themselves
labeled depending diversely, on the discourses used in their analysis: madness
mystical transport, and hallucination, for example. good and evil variously instantiated this dialectical tension, manifesting it by slowing down the
on the body or manifest themselves in abnormal and which behavior, have been
demonic possession, trauma, moral psychosis, turpitude, hysteria
fits
(1993)
Gordon has
.
Nlftka·
3
Whirlpool
guess this accounts for
appropriates a little
Win, Place, or Win, Show
a Vancouver-produced I
thereby generating an almost
.
,
The Clients,
.
( 1996), ( which, draw respectively, on the
.
C
.
Catastrophe: Ruskin, B
,
A liminal space suspended precariously intime lies at the core, not only of
'
Pursuit, Fear
Douglas shot his scene in the gritty realist style of
not abide by conventional rules of television drama: the employment of long takes, the
In this In way Douglas not only deconstructs the conventions and values integral to the
CBC television series, which aired briefly in 1968 and whose concise parables did
absence of master shots, and the inarticulateness of leading characters were among its Read metaphorically and metonymically as an investigation into larger issues concerning signature features. Filmed from twelve separate camera angles, Douglas's takes are cut
endless series of montages, since everytime the scene repeats, it repeats differently.
an almost seamless illusion to a doubled to image, two completely contradictory views.
style, the style, genre, the medium, and even the art form he employs but, by highlighting devices of disidentification, foregrounds the conditions and terms of spectatorship and, by extension, indicts as false any encompassing ideology
together in real time by a computer during the exhibition
history that never transpired," in effect, it also completes a trilogy with The fractured and fissured representations that result range across the spectrum, from
within an ongoing thematic in oeuvre Douglas's in which skeptically he theprobes legacy of modernism, cauterizing its obsolete or unrealizable utopian "The dreams. memory of a
and colonial and postcolonial history of British Columbia in order to examine issues of terri
sustain it.
ground of some kind of transformation," Douglas adding avers, "
left is right and right is wrong and left is wrong and right is right especially the especially that ones look at specific address moments when historical events, history the control of social space, both in its private and public guises, could gone have one way or another. We live in the residue of such he moments," contends, "and for better or worse their potential is not yet spent.'
artist himself readily acknowledges: "[it] is less concerned with the narration of the toriality and the political relations based in class, and race, economics that subtend and event than with the space of its unfolding, like the obsessive remembrance and recon sideration of a traumatic incident in one's life that cannot be resolved because its true this but of series, of many lookingalways his "I'm for projects: this the nexuspoint, middle
the embarrassingly consistent binary constructions in work. my Almost all of the works, known film made in Hollywood in 1949 by Otto Preminger titled
Yet this Yet intricately layered work is equally open to psychoanalytical readings, as the
cause was elsewhere, and remains unavailable to the space of memory."
edited this generic film noir so that all the odd-numbered frames are placed onto one
on When the each. two are projected side the by side, one on the left is The reversed. original soundtrack has been similarly treated
video disk, the even on another: black leader occupies the space of the missing frames
two dock
if somewhat serendipitous,
,
Win, Place, or Win, Show
left is right and right is wrong and
After erupting into physical violence,
.
.
Double Vision
(1998) and
In addition, both taken have on the role of curator:
'
(1999) reveal additional
Both frequently have employed techniques involving bifurca
.
The continually looping, six-minute work chronicles an antago
.
takes as its point of departure the fundamental transformation of
Win, Place, or Win, Show
Growing up in British or former British societies during the 1970s and
.
1980s, these two young artists were subject to similar cultural imprinting. as Moreover,
music and on film scores
manifold guises, plays a critical role. Douglas orchestrated a touring show of Samuel Beckett's in Teleplays the late 1980s, Stan Douglas and Douglas Gordon
Scot Douglas Gordon nonetheless betray telling parallels and shared interests. Both In these part, parallels might be attributed to the related circumstances that surround artists work primarily with film and video,generally presenting these media in the form of installations. Both use found footage-documentary and fictional-as well as directing and producing their own material. Both focused have on sound in its own right, on
Win, Place, or Place, Win, Show his screenings took place. Very different in crucial respects, the oeuvres of the Canadian Stan Douglas and the
tion, doubling, and inversion for structural and thematic ends.And, for both, time, in its
while Gordon has compiled programs of films formerly banned in the countries where
reappears here fortuitously, for fortuitously,here reappears these works without were conceived independently,
students, they located their artistic heritages in Conceptual Art of the sixties and seven least because they have often found themselves participating in the same group shows.
genres for much of their source to material, and, somewhat different degrees, each has left is wrong and right is right engaged with new technological developments in order to effect an idea or a concept,
"Double Vision' is comprised of two new installations, both of which utilize dual projec
their formations consultation. Each artist been however, has, keenly aware of the other's practice, not
ties, as well as in film and video histories. Subsequently, they well ties, as been as drawn haveto in film and video Subsequently, popular histories.
though Gordon generally prefers his work to appear immediate, simple to and realize, informing and governing each to emerge sharply transparent in its mechanics.
tion. Although it has previously appeared in their respective that oeuvres, structure blight' began in 1950 when the city commissioned a plan for the redevelopment of one
be demolished in favor of densea grid comprised of apartment towers, row housing, and When juxtaposed, When
correspondences: more importantly,comparison may permit the singular concerns nistic conversation that flares up on a wet day off
civic space that occurred in North America during the postwar initiated era, at an institu
of this its all existing poorest In Strathcona. neighborhoods,structures proposal, were to
a pair of dormitories for retired seasonal laborers. In
constructed, dormitories
it then lapses into weary irritation, only to be rekindled into a smoldering verbal friction.
tional level under the rubric of "urban renewal.' In Vancouver, the tional the undercampaign level against "urban rubric of Vancouver, In "urban renewal.'
workers share a tenth-floor, one-bedroom apartment in one of those planned, but never