Kim Gordon studied at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles in the late 1970s and has continued to work as an artist since. Her first solo exhibition presented under the name ‘Design Office’ took place at New York’s White Columns in 1981. For the past thirty years Gordon has worked consistently across disciplines and across distinct cultural fields: art, design, writing, fashion (XGirl), music (Sonic Youth, Free Kitten, Body/Head), and film/video (both as actress and director).
Gordon’s artworks include the ongoing ‘Noise Painting’ series, depicting the names of experimental and noise groups; a series of paintings depicting the names of contemporary galleries and gallery owners; works from the untitled ‘From The Boyfriend’ series – Rorschach-like images painted on used denim skirts; ‘Twitter Paintings’ sourced from the Twitter streams of ‘GIRLS’ producer Jenni Konner, critic Jerry Saltz, and artist Richard Prince among others; and her ‘Wreath Paintings’, which employ the decorative folk forms as stencils to produce vertiginous colour abstractions. An insistence on dismantling the hierarchical sanctity of the object has become a through line in Gordon’s practice, and in her most recent work, canvases are treated with direct application of paints, resins, glitters and fiberglass, as well as physical manipulation. Performing a painting becomes its own medium, as finished works are crumpled, overturned and flung. Fixed between states of de- and re-composition, battle scars from past performances become gestural abstraction via mischievous punk irreverence.
Recent selected exhibitions include in 2017 Kim Gordon & Rodney Graham, L’Académie Conti, Dijon, France; in 2016 Manifesta 11, Zurich, Switzerland; 2015 Noise Name Paintings And Sculptures Of Rock Bands That Are Broken Up, Benaki Museum / Deste Foundation, Athens, Greece Design Office: The City Is A Garden, 303 Gallery, New York; All Instruments Agree: an exhibition or a concert, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. In 2014 Coming Soon, Design Office, Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles; 1NVERSIONS with Nick Mauss, Frieze Projects, London; in 2013 Design Office with Kim Gordon – 1980, White Columns, New York and in 2012 Karen Kilimnik & Kim Gordon, 303 Gallery, New York and in 2009 Sonic Youth ETC.: Sensational Fix, (Traveling exhibition) MUSEION, Bolzano; Kunsthalle Dusseldorf; Malmo Kunsthalle; Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid.