Spreading Rumors

Kim Gordon first officially entered the world of fine art under the moniker of Design Office in 1981. She described the debut solo show, at White Columns, as “the redefinition of public (office) and private (home) sensibilities,” conceiving Design Office as something like a “service” bringing to fruition an idyllic “‘dream house” as if it were a showcase for one’s life. 

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The 71-year-old artist has periodically revisited the concept—less an alternate identity as it is a fictional design firm-as-employer—in the more than four decades since. Its latest iteration comes in the form of “Rumors” at O-Town House in Los Angeles, where Gordon presents two video works that recall her investigation of the living-cum-work spaces while also taking on deeper, resonant meanings, layered with ideas around social roles in given environments.

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Co-directed with Manuela Dalle, the artist's 2022 short film Picture Window is loosely inspired by Chantal Akerman’s 1975 brutal feminist film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, which profiles three routine days in the life of a windowed homemaker. In the 38-minute-long film on view in “Rumors,” we see Gordon wake up, tend to chores in the kitchen, eat a sandwich with her daughter, Coco, and vacuum her living room; all the while, the musician sports a plugged-in, red electric guitar, which keeps bumping into things and emitting dissonant strumming noises. One clear way to interpret the piece is that Gordon’s everyday “private” life is in the shadow of her professional success as a musician, or maybe, sometimes, vice versa. Though, given the dystopian ending to Jeanne Dielman (spoiler alert: on day three, the widow stabs a john to death post-coitus), perhaps Gordon imagined the darker strife tied up in mundane, unpaid labor, especially in contrast to an auspicious public creative persona. 

Gordon’s second film on view, a 14-minute piece titled the same name as the exhibition, falls firmly on the professional side of the artist’s life. Captured by Gordon herself on via iPhone, POV footage reveals an evening networking scene at O-Town House, followed by a daytime meeting with its founder Scott Cameron Weaver. Here, the two discuss the particulars of the very show the video is debuting in, including the decision to install a large mirror-wall with the screen playing Rumors inset. 

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The gist of it all: the artist’s larger-than-life identity is whittled to the common parts of her existence. Still, such things are fascinating to behold when enacted by certain people, Gordon among them. 

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“Kim Gordon: Rumors” is on view through July 6, 2024. at O-Town House at 672 La Fayette Park Pl #44, Los Angeles, CA 90057.