Artists' Television Access

Right Window Gallery at ATA: Matthew Gordon is “Posing as an Echo Tourist”

November 7, 2024 - November 28, 2010

November 7 – 28, 2010

Opening: Sunday, November 7th, 4 – 8 p.m.

Right Window is pleased to present a new installation by San Francisco-based artist Matthew Gordon. Through e-mail correspondence with the artist, I learned that the exhibition takes its name from a conversation where Gordon misheard/misunderstood what was being said to him. He wrote the phrase down in a notebook, along with other phrases gathered in a similar manner, and stored it away for later use. Eventually it reappeared in a poem, but also as a locus of thought around which Gordon created a new body of visual work.

When I asked him to expound upon this idea of re-purposed text and ideas, Gordon responded via e-mail with the following:

two plexiglass boxes-

part almost then,

part almost window,

contain a prismatic relationship

where mystical smog transforms into an accidental newscasting technique-

i watch my hands,

loosing a high stakes performance space,

fill a field with guilt-

i am enchanted by a copy and its double.

posing as an echo tourist,

my little heart is broken

by a tactical break-up spell

as the light shimmers on my invisible authors.

And I’m sure we all know what that means.

– Kevin Killian

(The North Carolina Dermatologist, not the San Francisco based Poet/Playwright) Matthew Gordon (b. 1979) is a recent graduate of the California College of the Arts (2009). He is the Co-Director, along with Mik Gaspay, of the quasi-fictional exhibition space/opinion FiSHSPACE Gallery. His work has been included in group shows at Patricia Sweetow Gallery (SF) and Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery (Portland, Oregon).