Kim Gordon

American, born 1953.

Best known as the bassist of the rock group Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon began making art in the late 1970s. Her first solo show, “Design Office,” occurred in New York in 1981, and showcased a range of art-making processes centered around the goal of allowing design to deconstruct art, and vice versa. Incorporating writing, music, film, and painting, the exhibition represented art outside of the gallery system and served as an exploration of the minimal materials and seemingly indifferent tone of Gordon’s oeuvre. In her recent “Wreath Paintings” series, Gordon stencils wreaths—symbols of mourning, celebration, and harvest—onto canvases with spray paint, giving permanence to mortal plants. For the series “Twitter Paintings,” the artist reproduces tweets by pop culture figures in an unskilled, graffiti-like style.