Exhibition

The Temptation to Exist: Douglas Gordon, On Kawara, Terence Koh and Andy Warhol

22 Nov 2008 – 24 Jan 2009

Save Event: The Temptation to Exist: Douglas Gordon, On Kawara, Terence Koh and Andy Warhol3

I've seen this

People who have saved this event:

close

Yvon Lambert

London, United Kingdom

Address

Travel Information

  • Old Street
Directions via Google Maps Directions via Citymapper
Event map

About

Yvon Lambert London is pleased to present The Temptation to Exist, a group exhibition featuring works by Douglas Gordon, On Kawara, Terence Koh and Andy Warhol. The exhibition will run from November 22nd and will feature a new performance by Terence Koh at the opening reception on Friday November 21st.

The exhibition takes its title from E. M. Cioran's book The Temptation to Exist in which the author deliberates the 'inconvenience of existence'. According to Cioran, death itself becomes a symbol of relief from our relentless temptation to exist in a world of transient objects. At the entrance of the lower gallery a 17th century still-life depicting a skull and bones, a motif used by Old Master artists as a reminder of mortality, will be displayed as the central piece of the show. This theme of mortality is addressed by each artist in the exhibition.

Terrence Koh will perform in front of a mural-like gold mirror while masquerading as an angel. The mirror, which will remain on the wall as a relic of the performance, seeks to recapture elements of Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper mural in its scale and the transience of the crumbling mural's fading materials. By reinventing himself as a creature that transcends matter the artist suggests that he transcends death as well.

On Kawara similarly establishes death as a prominent theme in his paintings. The artist began making his Today series on January 4th 1966 in New York and has been making them all over the world ever since. Each Date painting is completed by midnight on the day that it is painted, otherwise it is destroyed. The paintings function as monuments to Kawara's existence as well as a ecording of the passage of time leading to the inevitable end of the Today series with Kawara?s death. After the artist's death the paintings will remain, a testament and yet a remnant, similar to the vanitas.

Andy Warhol was creating an anthology of the American way of death, from car crashes to the electric chair as early as 1963. In this year he merged the American superstar image with that of assassination in his Jackie O series. In Gun (1981) Warhol singled out the ordinary instrument of murder for isolated scrutiny, and in Knives (1982) ordered sets of these objects in repeated overlapping trios, seemingly utilitarian and yet menacing in their evocative colour.

Douglas Gordon's interest in murder also lies in offensive weapons. The title of his photographic series Three Inches Black (1997) refers to a story from his childhood in Scotland when the police, in a crack down on attacks, had decided to ?confiscate any knife or sharp object that was three inches long - the distance necessary to penetrate the heart?. In Self Portrait of You and Me (After the Factory) (2007) Gordon transforms Warhol's skull canvases into charred, pinked bits of commercial reproductions floating on mirrored backgrounds. Rather than use this symbol as a traditional momento-mori, Gordon?s macabre subject matter stems from the idea of purgatory, the place where souls remain until they have expiated their sins and can go to heaven.

Comments

Have you been to this event? Share your insights and give it a review below.