Sasha Gordon

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Sasha Gordon (b. 1998 in The Bronx, NY) is an American figurative painter. Her self-portraits, executed with oil paints, typically depict her nude body in a variety of strange situations. Her work grapples with misogyny, racism, and homophobia. Vogue Magazine described Gordon's paintings as having a "secret alchemy that sets them off from the current avalanche of figurative art rooted in identity politics".

This article is about the painter. For the actress, see Sasha K. Gordon.

Sasha Gordon
Born	1998 Bronx, NY
Nationality	American
Education	Rhode Island School of Design, BFA
Known for	Painting

Biography

Sasha Gordon was born in 1998 to a Polish American Jewish father and a Korean mother. She grew up in Somers, New York and expressed interest in art at an early age. Her artistic mother encouraged this interest by setting up a permanent table with crayons, colored pencils, and paper for Sasha when she was four years old. At the age of five, she began taking classes at a local art center.

Gordon entered the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2016. In her early RISD days, Gordon experimented with hyperrealistic paintings of the human face. During her sophomore year, she began shifting towards painting self-portraits that explored the complexities of who she was. This caught the attention of gallerist Matthew Brown who included one of Gordon's paintings in a group show at his LA gallery in 2019 while she was still at RISD, and then gave Gordon her first solo show the following year, which drew favorable reviews from critics and led to her first museum acquisition by ICA Miami.

Over the following years, Gordon's career and following gained significant momentum, leading ArtNet to describe her early success as "head-spinning". In 2022, one of her large self-portraits was featured at the Rudolph Tegners Museum outside Copenhagen alongside older established artists like Cecily Brown and Jenna Gribbon. In 2023, her painting Campfire appeared alongside Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Christina Quarles, Jonas Wood, and others at the Hammer Museum’s show “Together in Time”. Gordon’s work was exclusively featured in many of the museum’s advertising banners for this exhibition. Also that year, visitors to the Baltimore Museum of Art voted Gordon's painting Mood Ring as one of their top five "most loved" works in the museum. Her work is the subject of a forthcoming solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.

Gordon attended the 2023 Met Gala as a guest of Balenciaga, wearing a custom outfit designed for the occasion by Elena Velez.

Gordon lives in Brooklyn, NY and works from her studio there.

Work

Gordon's work often revisits and rewrites memories of her childhood by inserting herself now, often in multiples, to lay claim to the right to occupy space as a biracial, queer woman. She responds to the fetishization of the Asian female body by depicting empowering self-portraits of her (often nude) body. Her everyday scenes of joy and distress fill large canvases with vibrant, rich cool tones and exacting technical detail. Her figures' eyes often are unnaturally glossy, their skin soft and plasticky, illustrating the alienation and disconnection in a white, heteronormative space while also offering a surreal escape. In this way, art-making offers the artist a therapeutic processing of vulnerable memories.

Of the nudity in her work, Gordon says "Sometimes clothing can add too much context to the narrative and I want the characters to be freer from assumptions. They’re most vulnerable when they’re nude. So much body language can be shown through skin and the folds, and there’s a different type of movement that I’m interested in. And there’s obviously more intimacy in those scenes."

Influences

Gordon found it difficult to relate to many of the artists and artworks she was exposed to in her youth because the artists and their subject matter were white and therefore did not match her East Asian appearance. She discovered the work of Liu Wei, which empowered her and inspired her to make paintings of people that she connects with racially and emotionally. Other artists that Gordon cites as impactful on her work are Kerry James Marshall, Nicole Eisenman, Dana Shutz, and Cheyenne Julien.

Selected Works

Campfire, 2021, Oil and molding paste on canvas, 6 x 9'.

In this painting, Gordon presents herself in many forms and a range of affective states. The work's cool tones and rich blues are used to create a surreal and magical feeling. While some renditions of the artist frolic in the water, another proudly chops wood besides several smoking and drinking Gordons. The painting offered Gordon the ability to reflect and heal from her experiences "as a lesbian Asian girl growing up in a white, upper-middle-class New York suburb."

Concert Mistress, 2021, Oil on canvas, 72 x 48 x 2 1/4".

This large self-portrait shows the artist grinning wildly while playing a violin, an unseen viewer peering through the window. Playing with the model minority stereotype, Gordon pushes viewers to question their biases and to address the pressures of the white gaze and the stereotypes it engenders.

The Archer (diptych), 2021, Oil on canvas, 3 x 6'.

These pieces face each other across a room--one self-portrait draws her arrow toward the opposing painting, where another self-portrait resignedly and anxiously offers a thumbs up, apple on head and missed arrows at her feet. At war with herself and "catching viewers in the crossfire," the artist implicates those gazing upon her body.

I Left The Night The Dummy Crashed The Gordon’s Volvo, 2017, Oil on canvas, 5'x 6'.

This work is one of the most pronounced of a series of works that Gordon executed in 2017 as she transitioned from her early hyperrealistic work to her signature works featuring her body. This series of transitional works featured Gordon as a latex dummy. Asked about this painting in a 2018 interview, Gordon stated: "In my recent work, I have this figure, sometimes multiple, in a black, latex, plastic suit that represents my anxiety and depression, personifying it. A large part of my anxiety is my fear of death...In this piece, I am faking my death, to escape reality."

Exhibitions

2023

Solo Show (Forthcoming), Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Miami, FL

Together in Time: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA

Sasha Gordon: The Flesh Disappears, But Continues To Ache, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK

2022

Wonder Woman, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Hands of Others, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, New York, NY

Heroic Bodies, Rudolph Tegners Museum, Dronningmølle, Denmark

Women of Now: Dialogues of Memory, Place, and Identity, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX

2021

Mother and Child, Friends Indeed Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Enters Thief, Matthew Brown Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2020

NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT, Public Gallery, London, UK

2019

BIG PAINTING, Patrick Parrish Gallery, New York, NY

Nostos, Matthew Brown Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Basta Cosi: The Lemon has been Squeezed, Palazetto Cenci, Rome, Italy

2018

You’re Invited Sleepover, Gelman Gallery, Providence, RI

Teen Art Gallery, Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 5, Brooklyn, NY

PAUHAUS Art Festival and Exhibition, Robeson Art Gallery, Peekskill, NY

2017

Pure as a Seagull’s Belly, Gelman Gallery, Providence, RI

2016

Teen Dream, Presented by TopShop, New York, NY

See Also

• Frida Kahlo
• Cindy Sherman
• Yue Minjun