100 colour and 22 b/w illustrations
Douglas Gordon is among the leading artists who emerged in British art during the 1980s and 1990s, and is considered one of the best contemporary video artists. He was born in 1966 in Glasgow, and was the winner, in 1996, of the Turner Prize, the most prestigious international contemporary arts award. He has long been interested in the double expressive registers of communication – verbal and images in movement – and has distinguished himself in terms of uncommonly sized video installations, and for his texts, which are printed on the walls of exhibition spaces in the most unusual places.
The catalogue has been produced for his first Italian solo show organised at the Mart in Rovereto, and comprises a long interview conducted by Mirta D’Argenzio, in which the British artist speaks about his most recent work, a film on the French soccer player Zinedine Zidane created with Philippe Parreno and presented in 2006 at the Cannes Film Festival. He talks about his inspiration for the film and its end. This is the catalyst to a publication taking in the artist’s complete oeuvre, which includes photography, objects and films. It is not surprising that Gordon is particularly well-known for his video works in which he reuses sequences from famous Hollywood films, such as his 24 Hour Psycho, in which the famous Hitchcock film is shown for a surreal length of time: 24 hours.
A great deal of the artist’s work explores popular culture, from films such as Rear Window, The Exorcist and Taxi Driver, and also anonymous documentaries, in order to examine perceptive processes and to interfere with viewers’ expectations. All this is set out clearly in the final extensive part of the catalogue, in which there is an overview of works ranging from installations permanently on show in cult contemporary spaces such as the Tate Modern in London and the Guggenheim, to film stills and finally the great textual work created especially for the exhibition spaces of the Mart in Rovereto.
