What my little visit to your studio did, it restored my faith in art.

(Jonas Mekas, in a letter to Gordon, 1995)

The Painting Center is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings Dana Gordon. Gordon, one of the founding members of The Painting Center, is an American abstract painter who began his art career working as assistant to Tony Smith and George Sugarman in the late 1960s in New York. He was a professor of art, lecturer, and set designer for the New York Opera Ensemble. His avant-garde films have been featured in international festivals and at MoMA.

Today, Gordon continues the exuberant work he has been making for decades. With compositions that explore the potential of line and gestural mark-making, Gordon’s paintings find footing in a revitalized appreciation of abstraction and its connections with the old and the new, with the geometric, the minimal, and the maximal. The images evolve and shift in a rhythmic automatic study of both the physicality of the process and his own interaction with space and materials.

Gordon’s first New York solo show of painting was at the Ericson Gallery in 1982. Since then, he has had multiple solo shows at the Andre Zarre, 55 Mercer, and Sideshow galleries in New York City, and Galerie Metanoia in Paris, France, among others.

Gordon's work is in many public and private collections, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, M.I.T., Adelphi University, and the Royal Belgian Film Archive, and of Edward Albee, Virgil Thomson, and Hilton Kramer. His art received awards from the Pollock-Krasner Fdn., Rauschenberg's Change Fdn., and university research grants, and residencies at the Edward Albee Fdn., the Triangle Workshop, and the Millay Colony. In 1978 he was the "runner-up" for the NEA's US/UK Bicentennial Exchange Fellowship.

Critical acclaim for Gordon's work has included Linda Gross, in the L.A.Times, 1978: "... for purists and pioneers in pursuit of new perceptions." John Russell in the New York Times in 1987 "...well worth seeking out...a painter of whom it would be good to see more." Helen Harrison, NYTimes, 1994: "...beautiful paintings, filled with the controlled exuberance of a carefully orchestrated spectacle." Grace Glueck, NYTimes, 1997: "... a very lively eyefest." James Panero, in the New Criterion, 2014: "While many artists paint widely, Gordon paints deeply.... Gordon knows 'what only painting can do.' " David Cohen, of Art Critical, on DG's Paris show, 2018: "Lucky Paris."

Gordon has written about art for The Wall Street Journal, The New Criterion, The New York Sun,Commentary, Delicious Line, The Jerusalem Post, and Painters' Table.