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16/11/2011

Douglas Gordon

MMK - Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt

At the close of the year marking the twentieth anniversary of the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, the museum will devote itself entirely to photography and video art. A solo exhibition on Douglas Gordon will await the visitor in the MMK main building (19 Nov 2011 – 25 Mar 2012), and one on Tobias Zielony at the MMK Zollamt (12 Nov 2011 – 15 Jan 2012).

Born in Glasgow in 1966, Douglas Gordon is today among the most important as well as the most influential artists of his generation. While he is famous for his films and large-scale video installations such as 24 Hours Psycho, his oeuvre also encompasses photographs, texts, sculptures and sound installations. He is a Turner Prize recipient and has been a professor at Frankfurt’s Städelschule art academy since 2010.

In addition to Play Dead; Real Time (2003), one of Gordon’s chief pieces, the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst also has a number of other photo and video works by this artist in its holdings. Together they will provide the point of departure for the first major retrospective to be presented on Douglas Gordon in Europe since his show at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in 2007.

With his analyses of images drawn from the collective memory and everyday culture, Gordon exposes basic patterns of perception. Within this framework, his works often revolve around phenomena of duplication and reflection: the couple, the double, light and dark, guilt and justice, etc. His latest work is entitled k.364, which stands for “Köchelverzeichnis No. 364”, the Köchel catalogue number assigned to the Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Vienna in 1779. After hearing this work of chamber music in Poznań (Poland), Gordon organized another performance of it with the well-known musicians Avri Levitan (viola), Roi Shiloah (violin) and the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra of Polish Radio. The musicians’ journey from Berlin to Warsaw by way of Poznań and the performance of the symphony in Warsaw account for the major proportion of the film. The two musicians’ conversations on their way to Poland reveal that their pasts, and those of their parents, are complexly interwoven with German-Polish relations, and above all with the history of the Polish Jews during World War II.

The new film k.364 will be supplemented with the pieces by Gordon in the MMK collection and a large number of other prominent works of the past years to form a comprehensive exhibition – the first to assemble the latest works and thus to provide a concentrated and impressive overview of this multifaceted artist’s oeuvre.

In addition to the major film and video installations that made Gordon famous, the MMK will also be presenting photographs, texts and sculptures. A magnum opus from the MMK collection will form the show’s point of departure: on two freestanding screens, Play Dead: Real Time (2003) will project life-size close-ups of an elephant’s massive body moving through a bright empty space.

Along with photo installations rich in imagery, for example Straight to Hell; No Way Back and very recent additions to the series Self-Portrait of You + Me, the exhibition will also present three further video works by the artist. One of them, his 2006 film on Zinedine Zidane, will be installed at the MMK on seventeen separate screens for the first time. Each screen will show a different perspective, all of which were shot with high-speed cameras. Gordon and his co-author Philippe Parreno thus created a football portrait of the twenty-first century.

Gordon completed his work on k.364 in 2010. It is a film about history and the present based on a journey taken by two Israeli musicians who perform Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante (KV 364). The two musicians’ conversations on their way from Berlin to Warsaw reveal that their pasts, and those of their parents, are complexly interwoven with German-Polish relations, and above all with the history of the Polish Jews during World War II.

Another work to be premiered at the MMK is the video installation Henry Rebel Drawing, executed in collaboration with the young actor Henry Hopper, the son of Dennis Hopper. It will be shown in the central hall of the museum on two screens placed one above the other. The subject is an improvised performance on the existential states of a teenage rebel’s emotional outburst and vulnerability.

Supported by Gagosian Gallery (London), Galerie Eva Presenhuber (Zürich), Yvon Lambert (Paris)

The exhibitions is accompanied by a catalogue

Image: Douglas Gordon, k.364 ©

Press contact
Christina Henneke Tel +49 69 21237761 - Daniela Denninger, Karen Knoll Tel +49 69 21235844/ Fax +49 69 21237882 presse.mmk@stadt-frankfurt.de

Opening: 17 November 2011 from 8 pm
Press conference: 17 November 2011, 11 am

MMK - Museum fur Moderne Kunst
Domstraße 10 60311 Frankfurt am Main
Hours:
Tue - Sun 10 am - 6 pm
Wed 10 am - 8 pm
Admission:
concessions 5 €
Schoool classes 3 € per persons
free for children aged 6

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