For his series Still Lifes, Portraits and Parts, Daniel Gordon first created three-dimensional sculptures—made from collages of printed digital imagery borrowed from magazines and the Internet—and then photographed them with a 4 x 5 view camera. The resulting images are interesting examples of appropriation art in that the materials and images are culled from other sources and re-used, while the subjects and compositions reference Modernist masters like Picasso, Dalí, Matisse, and Cézanne.
“I’m inspired by cooking and food, Matisse, and being in the ocean, among other things,” the artist Daniel Gordon says. “I begin with an idea of something I’d like to make, search for images online, print them, and then construct a three dimensional tableau that is then lit and photographed with a large format camera,” he explains.
Daniel Gordon uses photography to create images that toy with notions of artifice and authenticity. As an undergraduate, Gordon hit the ground running with his "Flying Pictures" (2001—04) a series of low-fi simulations of human flight. An assistant photographed Gordon as he catapulted himself into mid-air, capturing the magical instant—about 1/125 of a second—before gravity had its way. The resulting images blur the lines between reality and fiction, simultaneously documenting his activity and portraying an impossible event.
More recently, Gordon's practice has moved into the studio: instead of using himself as a model, the artist composes three-dimensional collages—mostly lurid still lives and grotesque portraits—from old magazines and Internet printouts, which he then photographs. Unlike the seamless perfection of images manipulated with Adobe Photoshop, these paper tableaux are deliberately crude and unpolished. "I'm interested in showing my hand and letting people see the imperfection," Gordon says. ??Gordon has had solo shows at several international galleries and has been included in notable group exhibitions including Out of Focus at the Saatchi Gallery, Greater New York at MoMA PS1 (2010), and New Photography 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art.
—LensCulture
