thu 28/03/2024

Douglas Gordon: K 364 | reviews, news & interviews

Douglas Gordon: K.364

Douglas Gordon: K.364

Nice music - but Gordon's sleight-of-hand trickery adds nothing

'The journey seems agonisingly slow, interspersed as it is by desultory, Impressionistic fragments'

After writing about a recent survey of French artist Philippe Parreno at the Serpentine Gallery last year, I found myself wondering about his collaboration with the Scottish artist Douglas Gordon. In 2006 the two artists made the acclaimed film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, and while Parreno’s skills as a film-maker were pretty evident from that first UK solo exhibition, Gordon’s talents must surely lie elsewhere - that is, outside the frame. Neither technically ambitious nor visually seductive, his films are not even meant to be seen in their entirety, certainly not his 1993 24-hour Psycho, which is simply a frame-by-frame re-presentation of the Hitchcock classic.

After writing about a recent survey of French artist Philippe Parreno at the Serpentine Gallery last year, I found myself wondering about his collaboration with the Scottish artist Douglas Gordon. In 2006 the two artists made the acclaimed film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, and while Parreno’s skills as a film-maker were pretty evident from that first UK solo exhibition, Gordon’s talents must surely lie elsewhere - that is, outside the frame. Neither technically ambitious nor visually seductive, his films are not even meant to be seen in their entirety, certainly not his 1993 24-hour Psycho, which is simply a frame-by-frame re-presentation of the Hitchcock classic.

Gordon’s sleight-of-hand trickery is too slight to persuade in either direction

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