Douglas Gordon review – pop is a light that never goes out

Gagosian Davies Street, London
Using snatches of illuminated song lyrics, Neon Ark cleverly shows how words that aren’t our own can be intimately felt

The craft of neon sign-making is a dying art, according to Douglas Gordon, who has commissioned a dazzle of glowing texts that shine through the gallery window into the winter twilight. You could equally say Gordon, whose video installation 24 Hour Psycho made him a star in the 1990s, as did his winning the 1996 Turner prize, embodies a dying “craft” – the art of the readymade.

Invented by Marcel Duchamp, rediscovered in the 1980s as “appropriation art”, and taken to new heights of bare-faced cheek by Gordon’s generation, the readymade is not the lingua franca of modern art that it once was. Many younger artists depict their own experiences in authentic, direct ways including paint and figurative sculpture. But in this exhibition, Gordon quietly demonstrates why nicking other people’s work can still be a good way of making your own. Perhaps he goes further and asks what authenticity is, anyway? Can we really be sure we voice ourselves, however heartfelt our neon cries?

Continue reading...