“Gordon, with her electric bass slung over her dress, adds a hint of rock glamour, although her voice — at once fierce and fatigued — drips with downtown disaffection.” In his book Listen to This, Alex Ross aptly summed up everything we loved about Kim Gordon in her Sonic Youth days, which are undoubtedly long behind us at this point after her very public divorce from her bandmate, Thurston Moore.
While all of the other former members of Sonic Youth continue to make music and dabble in other art forms (Moore has been working on his poetry) Gordon is the member of Sonic Youth whose second act has been the most exciting. From her new noise duo Body/Head, whose debut album Coming Apart is out this week, and a future memoir to the news that Gordon will appear on a future episode of Girls, we’re living in a new Golden Age of Kim Gordon.
But long before she was singing about her pal Goo, guest starring on television shows, designing clothes, and hanging out with Sofia Coppola, Kim Gordon studied at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles in the 1970s. She presented her first solo exhibition, Design Office, at White Columns in 1981.
Now, Gordon has returned to the gallery where she premiered, showing off photographs, writings, videos, paintings, and sculptures she produced between 1980 and 2013 in a show called Design Office with Kim Gordon – since 1980 .
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns
Image credit: Kim Gordon. Courtesy of White Columns