Douglas Gordon: what have I done
1 November 2002 – 5 January 2003
www.hayward.org.uk
If critical credibility, grandiosity and media spectacle are the measure, Douglas Gordon has sometimes been in danger of looking like the Bill Viola for our time. Indeed, there are lots of good reasons not to like Gordon’s work, to tire of his recourse to theatre, to find his models of conflict and trauma a little limited. And yet, of course, he is much more than the hippy turned hip that Viola is; much more intelligent, engaging, comical and everyday.
If Hitchcock had a brilliant understanding
of the mechanics of human fear, Gordon has a corresponding feel for the
undercurrents of narrative, and 24 Hour Psycho (1993), which greets us at
the entrance, is probably justly famous. Yet as many discover, when they
arrive and find little happening, its force is to a large extent derived
from its concept, and a good patina of credibility from addressing a
classic. This is often the case with Gordon’s work, which, while it might
employ pop culture, always inclines towards ennobled classics, and not those
with more immediate, contemporary currency. Another problem is his fondness
for spectacle, which doesn’t always suit his material: the video
installation Between Darkness and Light (1997), which overlays The Excorcist
and The Song of Bernadette, just makes for muddy confusion, not for
recognition of similarities in the films; while in his newest piece, Fog
(2002), his restaging of a vision from Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified
Sinner, is more mundane than dramatic, since a stage set of dark curtains
and dry ice is no match for Edinburgh Castle in the mist.
James Lingwood and Fiona Bradley, who curated the show, have, however,
constructed a very sympathetic installation from the Hayward’s unfriendly
shell, and brought out Gordon’s best qualities. Scattering televisions
around at various levels made for constant surprises and played to the
suggestions of compulsion and fidgety repetition in them; arms were always
wrestling with each other, fingers beckoning. Their selections also brought
out Gordon’s interest in R.D. Laing’s concept of the divided self, a concept
which never seems imposed on him, who so often comes across as serious,
honest and highly moral. It’s remarkable and commendable that an artist so
preoccupied by horror and trauma should seem so human and so equable.
Morgan Falconer