Adam Gordon: “If we take our work seriously, the work will change us”

Months turn to Years
Families emerge and grow
We have a boring conversation
Dim light moves across the walls as the days turn
A large lady sits in the corner throwing children out into the world
I stand with my brothers and sisters in the grey rooms
And the young man continues digging in the basement 

– Adam Gordon

The day I met Adam Gordon it was overcast and warm. Somewhere in the back of his apartment an air conditioner hummed and the soft glow of natural light leaked through the blinds. The space was bright but that did not offset an undertone of somberness. After chatting for a bit, I accompanied him to the gym. On the drive he explained that he approaches his workout regiment with the same seriousness as his art.

I first heard about Gordon’s work over dinner with friends. I looked up a few images online, but it was not until I saw his paintings in person that I began to understand why his work was special. I love his paintings, so I was surprised to learn that he thinks of himself primarily as an installation artist. But I now think that is the key to his work: to see each piece as an installation, a space he has constructed that floats between mediums.

Before attending Yale for his MFA, Gordon studied at a highly traditional art school called Lyme Academy in Connecticut. He characterised it more as an 18th-century French art academy than a modern art school and developed a classical foundation in draughtsmanship, painting and sculpture. He talked about paying acute attention to a subject such that its familiarity becomes unfamiliar. As a result his rigorous process both mimics and transfigures everyday life.

Gordon explained, “My process is as important as the final result. I make an underpainting because it affects the final work, yet is unseen. It involves multiple layers.” This process embeds his paintings with intensity, lending to their uncanny and anxiety-inducing energy. In opposition to modern commercial imagery, trafficking in familiarity and nostalgia, his work is unintentionally confrontational. “I believe that if we take our work very seriously the work will change us.”

In 2022, during Paris+ par Art Basel, Gordon organised an installation on the outskirts of Paris with his Italian gallery, ZERO. The garage space was only open between 7 and 9 pm and viewers were told to walk to the back upon entry. With only one small lamp near the front, the back of the space fell into complete darkness. By feeling around, it was possible to make it through a plastic curtain into a warm, damp hallway. There was a fetid odour of something both rotting and sweet. A small rectangle of light illuminated the greyness, a kind of peephole. The light was coming from a room where a figure in a dark knit cardigan with long ash-blonde hair stood gently rocking back and forth, looking out of a window.

The experience was both familiar and alien. Looking back at it I realised that the border between Gordon’s world and the ‘real world’ became porous. The journey from the centre of Paris on a metro line I’d never taken before, the quiet suburban street, the ambient sound of a television from an open window and the glowing curtain billowing out of it, all became part of the work. The border between art and everyday life became fused.

4 Strings – Take me Away (Live at VIVA Interactive 2003) and The Depression of Belgium, Chapter NY, New York, 2022, 2024