Melissa Gordon

A painter who creates large-scale, hanging works, Melissa Gordon has made a career out of exploring the legacy of twentieth-century abstraction. Creating paintings that she then mounts and hangs from the ceiling, Gordon melds mediums, resulting in works that incorporate elements of, and blur the boundaries between, painting, sculpture, and installation. Often using bright colors and block-like geometric forms, Gordon masses and layers the simple elements she employs, highlighting the way that presence can convey absence. Gordon is particularly interested in finding weakness within the works of notable male artists: she will often mine the works by the likes of Mondrian and Pollock, ferreting out what she deems failed or unsuccessful elements, and then enlarging those details in her own work.

Gordon has been included in exhibitions at notable institutions such as the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf.