Art 21 take us around Brooklyn-based artist Daniel Gordon’s studio

but then sometimes you go it's so long ago that you really are so detached I've heard you say that before and I've never felt that you haven't know every now and then like what about um oh god don't even say anything hello yeah this is he a few weeks ago I was here working and I got a call from somebody who had bought a work that I made in 2004 and then the picture was damaged and they were wondering if they could have it reprinted so I started looking for the negative and it was really great to that back twelve years ago and see what I was making then it's shockingly kind of similar to what I'm doing now I really like that plant it's so weird and I think that's the clue into the fact that it's constructed tableaux back then I was trying to figure out what my voice was and I was also just kind of learning how to make stuff physically but I really was trying to mimic reality which is something that I have become less and less interested in not that there's not a version of reality in my pictures now but instead of trying to hide all of that work I think it became more interesting to show the crumpled paper and the handmade stuff to show that Photoshop is like really present in the process changing a watermelon to be blue or a peach to be green pixelating things adding noise to stuff I thought we needed more space away from each other but maybe what we really needed was more time together Ruby probably likes my past work more than I do and I like Ruby's past work more than she does it's pretty rare that we look back and we're like that was so great what I was doing know as I get further from the thing I dislike it more and more but then sometimes you go it's so long ago that you really are so detached I've heard you say that before and I've never felt that you haven't know every now and then but what about um alright don't even say a thing what about the vase okay that's the one thing the food is okay okay what about I stopped in a lot of ways the more work you make the more there is to make you make a lot of work and then you hang on to a few and I find myself looking back at a few pictures and wanting to expand on those for example I found that picture when I was moving was made around the same time as some of these other pictures you know and I was rien spired by it and one to see what it would be like if I took that as a starting point I was interested in what happened if I took out the identifiable parts of the face kind of like how far I could push the idea of a portrait kind of how far I could go away from what an eye is or what a nose is or what a mouth is and still hopefully have it read as a portrait in some way like for example just talking about these pictures they're so new that I don't know the answers to them like I think it takes a long time to kind of understand what it is you're doing I've been in stage for a couple of months where like I haven't been able to figure out where I want to go and it's like you have to be delusional to like keep coming back every day to make more failures I just feel like I've never satisfied with my work and I think that's good like I'm always antsy it I just want to keep growing and making things that are beyond my expectations and making things that are ambitious and and terrify me I think I'm like right in between generation I lived half my life before the internet and half my life after so I think that there's a really interesting conflict between the analog versus the digital and I love both you know for example like this really large still life I made a quick selection of watermelon the green jug the blue plum and the orange peach and then created a new canvas and kind of stamped those that selection into the new canvas I was curious and still am curious if there was a way to make non representational images but also still in some way are related to my photographs that they're kind of an in-between thing was kind of interested to see where the line between a photograph and a painting and a sculpture lies I think the real question is how can you continue to work and continue to be truly invested and truly interested in what you're doing and for me the only way to do that is to try new things to invent new ways of making pictures so that eventually maybe those questions will have answers but like right now I'm just kind of asking the questions I think you

Channel: NOWNESS

Views: 45,347

Rating: 4.9217987 out of 5

Keywords: short film, NOWNESS, Art, Photography, Profile, Brooklyn, Daniel Gordon, Art21

Id: NKjq-9qjKpE

Length: 7min 33sec (453 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 29 2016