Douglas Gordon - Superhumanatural

2 November, 2006 to 14 January, 2007

Douglas Gordon: installation view, "Superhumanatural", Inverleith House, 2006.

This major retrospective exhibition by Douglas Gordon took place at three venues in the Garden and at the National Galleries of Scotland's Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) building on Princes Street.

Inverleith House

Gordon created a major new work for this exhibition which occupied not only the seven rooms of Inverleith House, but its entrance and unique stairwell, corridors and windows. Entitled; Pretty much every word written, spoken, heard and overheard from 1989 until now... (2006), it consisted largely of texts created in a variety of fonts and materials and several installations. It stemmed from Gordon's long-held wish to 'turn a house into a book', reflecting his fascination with the written and spoken word and the dualities of good and evil, light and dark, heaven and hell...It was complemented by a series of his major film and video works on display at the Royal Scottish Academy.

The Wash-House

Plato's Cave (2006) was also a new work created for this exhibition, in which shadows of the visitor were cast by a flickering flame onto the bare, stripped interior of this annex of Inverleith House. The title refers to the allegory in Book VII of Plato's Republic, in which humans, bound by their necks and legs in an underground cave, are illuminated by a fire burning far above and behind them which casts shadows onto a wall. It is one of the earliest attemps to explain our perception of reality; how it is blinkered and misleading to the untutored mind but how the mind can be trained to look beyond appearances and see a truer, higher reality.

Caledonian Hall

Between Darkness and Light (After Wiliam Blake), (1997) was one of Gordon's most dramatic works, in which the films The Exorcist and The Song of Bernadette ran simultaneously on both sides of a translucent screen, merging in an evocation of the struggle between the forces of good and evil.

Biography

Douglas Gordon was born in Glasgow in 1966 and trained at Glasgow School of Art and the Slade, London. In 1993 he exhibited 24 Hour Psycho at Glasgow's Tramway and was represented in the 1995 British Art Show in Edinburgh (showing at Caledonian Hall). He subsequently won the Turner Prize, the Premio 2000 at the Venice Biennale and the Hugo Boss prize. Gordon has exhibited extensively in major museums and galleries worldwide. Working with fellow artist Phillippe Parreno he completed the highly-acclaimed feature film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait in 2006 and he was the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he now lives. He has also previously exhibited at the Garden in Family (1998/9) and Evergreen (2005).

Douglas Gordon: installation view, "Superhumanatural", Inverleith House, 2006.

Douglas Gordon: installation view, "Superhumanatural", Inverleith House, 2006.

Douglas Gordon: installation view, "Superhumanatural", Inverleith House, 2006.

All work courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery.

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