Blain|Southern
Potsdamer Straße 77–87
10785 Berlin
7th February − 28th April 2013
Private View: Sunday 10th February
11am – 1pm
Blain|Southern Berlin is delighted to present a new group of video works by Douglas Gordon during the 63rd Film
Berlinale, 2013. Gordon is one of the most important and influential artists of his generation. In addition to films and
video installations, his work embraces photography, the written word, sculpture and music.
For Sharpening Fantasy, 2012 Gordon travelled to Tangier, where he filmed traditional knife grinders in different
locations within the Kasbah of the seaport city. The viewer watches as the effortlessly repeated movements of the
men are set to the soundtrack of their day’s work. Following the recent large-scale, site-specific works by Jannis
Kounellis and Lawrence Weiner, the installation transforms the former production hall of Der Tagesspiegel newspaper
into an experiential, audio-visual space. The work presents collisions between Europe and the ‘Orient’, perception
and prejudice, desire and fear.
Unlike the films of snake charmers in Natural Historie on the Parapet and Natural Historie on the Altar, which Gordon
recorded in Marrakech four years previously, Sharpening Fantasy, 2012 blurs the boundaries between the different
sensory perceptions, between reality and fairy tale, between dramatic imagination and a more muted gaze.
Douglas Gordon has long been affiliated with Berlin; he won a DAAD scholarship in 1998 and has lived and worked
there since 2008.
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