Douglas Gordon: Superhumanatural
Royal Scottish Academy and Royal Botanic Gardens (various venues)
Edinburgh, UK
2 Nov-14 Jan 2007

Review by Rea Cris

Superhumanatural is Glasgow-born Douglas Gordon’s first Scottish retrospective, and the latest in a line of Gordon events, including the recent release of his movie Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (made with Philippe Parreno) and another retrospective at the MoMA in New York. Once finished in Scotland, Superhumanatural will travel to Kunstmusuem, Wolfsburg and venues to be confirmed in Amsterdam and Prague.

Internationally acclaimed and the winner of major awards, including the Turner Prize, Gordon is an art celebrity and even more so in the Scottish art scene. Everything about this blockbuster exhibition, which is being shared between the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Botanic Gardens, oozes money and fame. For the press view, Gordon requested that a group of school children and their teachers, all dressed in paper devil costumes complete with pitchforks (it was Halloween), roam around the gallery for no apparent reason other than to be quirky. The exhibition catalogue boasts a contribution from another Scottish celebrity, Ian Rankin (best known for his detective novels featuring Inspector Rebus). Inspired by a chat with the artist himself, Rankin wrote a short story. The after-party featured Chicks on Speed (which Gordon collaborated with on a music single). The whole ensemble shouts sensational, but does the content?

The RSA accommodates the main (and more famous) works. These include 24-Hour Psycho (first shown at the Tramway in 1993) in which the Hitchcock movie has been slowed to be viewed over twenty-four hours, 30 Second Text (1996) a room installation of a bulb illuminating a text describing an experiment timing a man’s consciousness after having his head guillotined and 100 Blind Stars (2005) where the eyes of Hollywood actor and actresses have been cut out from their photographic portraits (the Rita Hayworth version is the face of the exhibit). Also displayed is a space-saving mini survey of Gordon’s film and video work shown on fifty monitors and entitled Pretty Much Every Film and Video Work from About 1992. The RSA itself has been transformed for the occasion; the walls have been painted black and some rooms boast a lush carpet, also black. Huge screens fill these otherwise empty rooms. The admission fee is six pounds. As a whole the exhibit is impressive, but when one wants to concentrate on individual works the layout is disadvantageous. The works compete against each other as their soundtracks echo around the gallery. 24 Hour Psycho has no seating and therefore little chance of attracting anyone’s endured attention.
There is no admission fee for the works shown over the three venues at the RBG, the reason probably being because there people are less likely to travel out to see them, and because the gardens have a reputation of offering free arts exhibitions. Also with hardly any supervision, the venues have fixed viewing times making it harder.

The Caledonian Hall shows Between Darkness and Light (After William Blake) where one screen simultaneously projects The Exorcist and The Song of Bernadette. This has ample, but empty seating. Inverleith House shows one of the new works entitled Pretty Much every word written, spoken heard and overheard from 1989 until now… The walls of Inverleith House are filled with phrases of varying size and colour proclaiming deep thought such as: ‘I have not forgotten because I cannot forget’ or ‘I know what you want’. If these phrases are all that Gordon has heard since 1989 than he must live in trashy airport novel. The second floor is slightly more promising. We find a list of fears, the most bizarre being fear of swollen membrane, teeth and urination and a telephone placed overlooking the gardens which when picked up has a man confessing he’s sorry that its not going to work but not to blame yourself because its about him and not you. Listening to the cliché break-up monologue by the window on a melancholy autumn day makes you feel like the heroine of a movie. The information sheet explains that Inverleith is Gordon’s ‘long-held wish to turn a house into a book’. It feels rather than Gordon couldn’t think of anything else better to fill the space with and knew he could get away with murder.

Plato’s Cave is the other new work. Housed at the Wash House it’s more sincere. It’s based on Plato’s ideas about reality where we live in a cave and perfect forms are transmitted to us distorted as shadows, our backs to the fire. I had to ask someone to open the venue for me. I was told to wait outside while she ‘turned it on’. I assumed all she was going to do was flick-a-switch but it turned out that ‘turning on’ Plato’s Cave consisted of lighting creosol in a little hole in the ground. Alone with live fire in an empty house felt more real an experience than any other of Gordon’s work. Plato’s Cave felt so raw and undisturbed. I felt for the first time I was really seeing Gordon’s work rather than his glamorous reputation. While the rest of the exhibition seems saturated in news-creating gimmicks and celebrity checklists, there was nothing in this venue telling me how great Gordon was. Plato’s Cave is the perfect form while the rest are mere shadows.

www.nationalgalleries.org/douglasgordon
http://www.rbge.org.uk/rbge/web/news/
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