The view from inside ‒ Melissa Gordon
-with Alice Channer, Asia Zielińska, Christiane Blattmann, Erika Hock and Gabriele Beveridge
Melissa Gordon is a painter and her material is often the politically pointed act of engaging with feminist histories and communities.
In her sixth exhibition with COSAR, she presents her most recent series of paintings 'The View from Inside' within a collaborative display of her artistic peers. Each of Gordon’s paintings emerges from a kinship: she photographs the open windows of female artists during studio visits. These windows then become the space for painterly abstractions.
Interwoven between her paintings, Gordon has curated an exhibition of the works of the artists through whose eyes we are looking. The windows-as-frames of the studios are printed with a silkscreen dot, and surround a painterly space of real and unlanguaged material, which mirrors or runs parallel to a real conversation between artists. Gordon’s paintings point to the history of windows-in-painting as the portal to the flat-ness, non-illusion of painting. A perspectival oscillation between fictional and real painterly space, which is mirrored in the sculptural objects around them, whose shadows are found in the studio photos.
Each material in the sculptural works of Alice Channer, Christiane Blattmann, Gabriele Beveridge and Erika Hock has an affinity to reality, to use: jeans, car grills, drainpipes, blown glass, furniture. Isa Genzken, who is a historic touchstone for these artists, has said that with “any sculpture…you have to be able to say, although this is not a ready-made, it could be one… It must have a certain relationship to reality.” The mutations in their works point to strange sensations of undoing such realities: thorned objects climbing the walls, alien forms inhabiting clothes, something in the process of melting away, none of which coagulates, but remains distinctly physical and fictional at once.
-
Melissa Gordon 'The View from Inside', Installation view, COSAR
-
Melissa Gordon 'The View from Inside', Installation view, COSAR
-
Melissa Gordon, The View from Inside (Gaby), 2025
Print, acrylic, pigment on canvas, 140 x 190 cm -
Gabriele Beveridge, Old Joy, 2025
Hand-blown glass, chromed steel, 41 x 26 x 16 cm -
Melissa Gordon 'The View from Inside', Installation view, COSAR
-
Alice Channer Climber (Sprinter), 2025 (detail)
-
Alice Channer Climber (Sprinter), 2025
Enamelled, Chromed and Naked Rose Thorns; ‚Chrome Front Grill 5 pcs S.STEEL
For Mercedes SPRINTER W907 2018-UP‘, 56 x 3.5 x 311 CM
Courtesy Konrad Fischer Galerie -
Melissa Gordon 'The View from Inside (Erika)', 2025
Print, acrylic, pigment on canvas, 175 cm x 160 cm -
Erika Hock, untitled
steel tube, powder-coated, 2 x 95 x 87 cm, 2014 -
Melissa Gordon, The View from Inside (Nane), 2025
Print, acrylic, pigment on canvas, 210 x 180 cm -
Christiane Blattmann, Column Drain, 2026
Canvas, cotton string, corset boning, velcro, aluminum eyelets, variable dimensions
Courtesy Damien & The Love Guru -
Melissa Gordon, The View from Inside (Asia), 2025
Print, acrylic, pigment on canvas, 200 x 190 cm -
ASIA ZIELIŃSKA, Piano Piano, 2024
Inkjet print on gessoed canvas, 59 cm x 58 cm