Shapely Controversy (Abstract painting), 2014

Dana Gordon  

Dana Gordon is an American abstract artist who explores playful shapes and vivid colours to display an exuberant abstraction. As a multidisciplinary artist, he also writes about art and, in the period 1968-78, made avant-garde films as well as paintings. He lives and works in New York City.

Gordon graduated in Art from Brown University, Providence. He then studied with artists Tony Smith, George Sugarman and Ad Reinhardt at Hunter College, New York where he earned a MA in Art. After his studies, he had the opportunity to work for Smith and Sugarman as their assistant in their studios. Dana Gordon also studied photography and film with Aaron Siskind at the Institute of Design in Chicago.

Early in his career, Gordon produced shaped, three-dimensional canvases before re-exploring painting, directly using mark-making and line as his main vehicle or entry point.

In his 2010-2014 paintings, the line has become the edge of the shapes, providing shapes for full expression of colour. Gordon thinks of the shapes, adjoining shapes, and clusters of shapes as little paintings in themselves, within the larger whole painting.

Dana Gordon was immersed in an artistic environment during his youth, visiting many times the Art Institute of Chicago. However the epiphany that made him comprehend creativity emerged from jazz clubs, hearing and seeing the improvisations of geniuses artists Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

When painting, Gordon is interested in the visual conversation between colours, shapes and lines, this approach is depicted in his paintings likewise in essays he wrote for various publications about his inspiring artist Camille Pissaro. Dana Gordon’s kaleidoscopic compositions are contemplative and evoke somewhat Orphic Cubism.