Introduction

American and British artist Melissa Gordon (°Cambridge, MA, USA, 1981 / works in London, UK) proofs how a relationship between painting and modernism can still be actual today. Important relationships in her work are the relationship between representation and abstraction, between presence and absence, and the questioning of the value of a gesture.

In her conceptual paintings, Melissa Gordon creates fascinating connections between the history, the political dimension, and the visual culture of the printed media and decisive moments in modern painting. In this way, she has in the recent past worked on the ethical aspects of media images, the ideologically laden work of American illustrator Norman Rockwell, the relationship between the imagery of the U.S. Work Projects Administration and abstract expressionism, and the illusory role of perspective in the development of both painting and press coverage. What is remarkable is that, in each project, Gordon is able to translate the inner tension of her subjects into autonomous, abstract visual language.

In her series ‘Material Evidence’ for example Gordon uses the accidental, contingent remains of her artistic production as the impetus for new works. With a playful wink, Gordon presents series of abstract paintings of the accidental marks and traces of the process of painting found on the floor and the walls of her studio. The artist zooms in on these traces of paint, crops them, and then reproduces them in acrylic paint on linen.

One of her most recent series entitled ‘The Gesture is a Joke’ show a different series of gestures. Gordon made these “paintings” ‘cleaning’ paint poured on a piece of plastic and exposed to silkscreen. The expressive gestures are documents of an act of cleaning, and are printed on thin muslin so light can pass through the material, showing the structure of the support.

Melissa Gordon was introduced by Deweer Gallery in 2012 in the group show “Re-Opening”. In 2014 followed “Modern Surfaces”, her first solo show at Deweer’s, in which her two series of works, “Material Evidences” and “Blow Up Modernists”, the latter based on iconic paintings taken from the history of modernist painting, for example Malevich or Pollock, were integrated. At the same time, her installation “Structures for viewing”(2013) inspired Deweer Gallery to present the eponymous group show with works by Günther Förg, Shirana Shahbazi and Imi Knoebel.

In 2016 Melissa Gordon has already exhibited solo on several locations, such as the exhibition ‘Routine Pleasures’ at the Vleeshal in Middelburg, The Netherlands and ‘Derivative Value’ at Overbeck-Gesellschaft in Lübeck, Germany. Earlier in 2016 Gordon presented the solo show ‘Fallible Space’ at The Bluecoat, Liverpool, UK. Melissa Gordon further presented solo-exhibitions at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, USA (2014) and at Spike Island, Bristol, UK and ‘Perspective In Time And Space’ at Cosar HMT, Düsseldorf (2013). In 2012 she made the solo show ‘Structures for Viewing’ for Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, where she had already shown with ‘A Lonely Crowd’ in 2009 and in 2010 she made the exhibition ‘Collisions’ (with Jessica Wiesner) for Galerie Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam.

Her major group exhibitions include the Biennials of Painting at Museum Roger Raveel, Machelen-Zulte, Belgium and ‘During the Exhibition, the Studio Will Be Close’ at Wiels, Brussels, both in 2014, ‘Art & Press’, Museum Karlsruhe and Kunstverein Malkasten, Düsseldorf, both in 2012, ‘Future Forward’, at the temporary Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 2011, ‘Monumentalism - History And National Identity in Modern Art’ (curator Jelle Bouwhaus) at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 2010, ‘PRIVAT’ at the Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal in 2009, the Prague Triennale at the National Gallery, Prague and ‘DUMA’ at Wiels, Brussels, both in 2008. In 2014 Sternberg Press published her monograph ‘Material Evidence’. In June 2016 a volumous catalogue of Gordon’s work ‘Painting Behind Itself’ has been published.