Gone Fishing

Sasha Gordon is fast becoming a major force in contemporary painting, garnering critical acclaim and even a monographic exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Gone Fishing is an important, quintessential example of the artist’s practice, included in her first group exhibition in Los Angeles in 2019. Mining figurative traditions in order to reassess female bodies and self-portraiture, Gordon touches on issues of identity, intimacy, and belonging. Hailing from a series of dreamlike tableaus, this particular canvas draws upon the artist’s memories and presents them in near-hallucinatory constructions where reality bends and twists. The figures turn as if interrupted and “[suggest] that visitors are infiltrating a place where they do not belong—right on cue. … [W]e steal the sense of safety and comfort that comes with privacy. Often, viewing the paintings, we find ourselves disrupting intimate moments: a shower, a romantic date by a pond” (H. Wong, “Sasha Gordon’s Perturbing Paintings of Recreation,” Art in America, June 7, 2021). By highlighting this connection between the viewer and the subject, Gordon creates a psychological tension that ripples throughout the painting.

Rendered on a large vertical canvas, Gordon depicts two women sitting on the edge of a rickety wooden dock looking out toward the viewer. The figure on the left, a representation of the artist herself, is completely sunburnt and glows a fiery red hue. She wears black shorts and a floppy bucket hat but has discarded her green bikini top revealing an intense contrast between her pale skin and the scorched areas that were exposed to the elements. Her companion wears a tie-dye t-shirt and holds tightly onto a fishing pole that probes the murky depths. She seems to have been spared the solar wrath that beset her friend, but the left figure’s lobster-red body emanates crimson light and creates a neon cast. Surrounded by blue water full of tiny fish and a slowly darkening sky, the entire scene is hyperrealistic and extremely detailed, but the picture plane expands outward like a photograph taken with a fisheye lens.

Paired with the contrasting subjects and the stylized scene, Gone Fishing becomes less about the recreational activities depicted and more about the inner workings of the artist’s memory. As her work evolves, this connection with Gordon herself has flourished as the figures come into sharper focus. “At first I said ‘Oh they’re not me. They’re just variations of myself,’” she explained. “While I still think that’s true, they’re definitely all me. I don’t see myself as one person. I change depending on who I’m with or what the situation is or my mood and all these other aspects. Growing up, I guess I had a hard time seeing myself as a person. Painting myself so solidly is a way of making myself feel more permanent and present” (S. Gordon, quoted in K. White, “‘I Want to Show the Conflict I Experience Within My Brain’: Young Painter Sasha Gordon on Her Tender and Menacing Self-Portraits,” Artnet, June 24, 2022). Representing how identity shifts via social interactions or environment, Gordon’s work is a testament to her attunement to an idea of the changing self.

Though her tableaus are often surreal in nature, works like Gone Fishing have a startlingly honest connection to Gordon’s real life and experience as a queer woman of biracial Asian descent. Speaking with Art in America in 2021, the same year that she graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, she connected the meticulous handling of her subjects to her own personal feelings about identity and perfection. “I feel like I have to be a certain type of Asian woman, a certain type of queer person, a certain type of body size,” she explained. “I’ve always been very hyperaware, and I think that’s a big aspect of my work” (S. Gordon, quoted in H. Wong, op. cit.). In the present work, this awareness presents itself in minute brushwork, intensely detailed backgrounds, and a marked dexterity for the rendition of human figures.