Through his appropriation of the communication structures of contemporary society, Douglas Gordon explores the mind's proclivity to create meaning, encouraging the viewer's active participation. Beyond their formal differences, his works are unified by the theme of memory, especially collective memory, and a focus on the act of perception through an evocation of intertwining private and public experience. This evocative power is especially evident in the pieces created using preexisting visual or audio sources. Something between My Mouth and Your Ear (1994) is a sound installation of songs popular in the months immediately preceding and following the artist's birth in 1966. Gordon is interested in this cultural context as a hidden influence on his perception of the world, an influence that possibly had its origin outside his real experience but that may have shaped his reading of reality nonetheless. Let's Entertain also features the large-scale text installation Above all else... (1991), which ends with the ominous but eerily comical words "We are evil," the chant of a local football group that Gordon read about in the newspaper. Placed on the ceiling, this piece disrupts the symmetry, physical and metaphorical, of the architectural space in which it is installed. It is both present and hidden by its location, waiting to be discovered and pondered by a visitor who dares to look upward. Gordon received the 1998 Hugo Boss Prize from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and also participated in the 1999 Venice Biennale.
