As the largest organ in the body, skin captivates artists for its fluid malleability, frightening vulnerability, and surprising resilience. The folds and stretches of skin wear out as we age, redden as we blush, freckle as we bathe in the sun, and bleed as we hurt. We subject the skin to numerous mutilations for pleasure and pain: tattoo needles, facial chemical peels, piercings, so on and so forth, all for the pursuit of aesthetic beauty as we explore new ways to decorate the indelible surfaces of our skin. Sasha Gordon’s artistic venture into the terrains of skin depictions follows a long line of artists whose worship of corporeal flesh illuminates their works. But unlike the unequivocal and sometimes cruel depictions of flesh often seen in hyper-realistic works, there is a distinctive sense of liberation within Gordon’s epidermal brushstrokes, one that is refined through the artist’s most intimate revelations of herself. In Sasha Gordon’s paintings, the body contorts but never conforms. Though Gordon’s intense anatomical study scrutinizes the figures she paints in a manner similar to Lucien Freud or Jenny Saville, the artist appears much more endeared and charmed by her subjects’ freedom and their child-like spirits. Citing Asian artists such as Ren Hang or Namio Harukawa to be her inspirations, Gordon paints her bodies with a fierce adoration instead of merely relaying their shapes on the canvas. Gordon’s exploration of the uninhibited Asian body resonates with a contemporary desire to see bodies in motion, to see them soak up the wonders of life, to see them under an authoritative autonomy that is antithesis to the regressive ideas of what we have been taught to understand bodies in popular culture. As the artist reconciles with her Asian identity through these paintings, the truth of her figures translates into a radical love for Gordon and her community.

Gordon’s predilection for diptychs shines through in her narrative frames with works such as Sore Loser and Campfire. The artist’s playfulness is observed in her characters, with the first painting depicting a tennis match on what appears to be a school playground. As other kids watch and cheer on through the other side of the security gate, the left panel shows the gloating winner delivering the triumphant serve of the game.  Running towards the net with a devious look on her face, the winner is flushed with the adrenaline rush of finishing off her opponent. The hems of her white tennis skirt flares up, revealing the sturdy yet soft contours of her legs. On the other side of the net, a portrait of the devastated loser takes up the right panel. The girl exasperatedly slumped down on the tuft, her arms supporting her body from completely falling down to the ground. On her face is an expression of disbelief, which Gordon had cleverly colored with a blue-purple hue that sharply contrasted her bright yellow shirt. Her right leg extends through the net and almost touches the edge of the canvas. The girl had already given up as the tennis ball was still mid-air in motion. Witnessing her own concession, the sore loser has no other choice but to simply anticipate her defeat as she watches the ball seals her fate. Two oppositional emotions take place on two separate panels, and the distinction between one and another is glaringly obvious. Yet, this is one of Gordon’s more straightforward work, an exercise in storytelling and a practice in form, albeit a masterful one. The aesthetics Gordon has refined is clearly captured through expressive movements of bodies effortlessly choreographed in motion as well as the conspicuous expressions of her characters.  At the core of her works, Gordon assumes the positions of many sides, setting herself up as someone who knows what both winning and losing feels like.

Shifting from day to night, Gordon’s subjects still glow in the dark with many curiosities and adventures. In the rowdy intimate scene of Campfire, a friend group enjoys one another’s company in their woodland rendezvous.  Here, the bodies appear uninhibited by the anxieties of the modern world: singing into a beer can, enjoying a midnight cigarette, chopping woods, and venturing towards the lake for an impromptu skinny-dipping. Pleasure permeates these portraits, as the bodies Gordon paints are left to do what they do best: having a good time. Surrounded by the eerie serenity of the forest, all of the friends are left to perform for no one, because no one is around. Their primary task of the night is to bathe in whatever nature has got to offer, to reconnect with the liberty that comes from letting your senses immerse in screen-less joys. Though the blue hues in Sore Loser signifies a disappointing emotion, in Campfire, it points to the neutralizing power of nature to let bodies be bodies and take up as much space as they possibly can. Campfire is an effervescent and freeing portrait of young twenty-somethings slowly making their ways back to childlike spirits by allowing for simple leisure that so many yearns for.

Gordon often ponders about the gazes that others subjected her to. Existing as a plus-size queer biracial woman, the artist is at the center of complicated conversations about intersectionality and racial projections, as she vocalizes in interviews. Gordon speaks extensively about her heightened spatial awareness due to growing up in the majorly white and heteronormative neighborhood as the daughter of a Polish-Jewish-American father and a Korean immigrant mother, saying how she “became very aware of [her] body in space.”  The canvas provides the artist room to explore the tension between internal desires and external forces, as the artist meditates on perception, growth, permanence, and judgment. It is true that no one can control what others think of them. But for those in the marginalized communities, asserting their individuality becomes even more of a daunting Sisyphean task, as others’ understandings of their personhood is implicitly entangled in a painful history of prejudice, colonialism, and racism. Gordon’s identity as a queer Asian woman magnifies the complications, as she professes, “Growing up, I felt there is the “me” who is present but there’s also this other, external force that’s judging and controlling what I do… A lot of my work makes you question who the viewer is and what power they have over the subjects in the painting – who usually have these startled facial expressions, or sometimes they’re menacing or giddy. It’s very dependent on who the viewer is and how they relate to the work.”

Gordon finds acceptance for herself by letting the subjects of her works spin out of control, often indulging themselves in mischief and shenanigans. In the majestic painting Garden Troll, a nude figure looms over the foreground, slightly bending down while simultaneously looking at the viewer with a devious smile as she picks flowers in a serene valley. The scene would have simply been a pleasant sight of an earthly creature frolicking among the vast field had it not been for the screaming farmer in the back, who is mortified at the intruder and holds both of her arms to her head to express her disturbance. Suddenly, a Zen and quiet composition becomes a menacing intrusion, with the figure picking up flowers now becoming the garden troll. We are supposed to sympathize with the farmer shrieking in the back, yet, something about the supposed troll is irresistibly charming and loveable. Gordon’s canvases are often comical, pointing to a blasé attitude and a witty sense of humor. These intrusions become happy incidents, something to amuse the viewers rather than to put them off from the work. For her debut exhibition at Matthew Brown Gallery in Los Angeles titled Enters Thief, Gordon’s convivial imagination comes to life. According to the Gallery, this supposed Thief character represents impulses of ‘hogging the spotlight, being a nuisance, or presumed passive bystanders.’ Within the works, the artist allows herself to go against her moral conditioning to imagine scenes of hilarious disobediences. The limiting space that she was forced to exist within throughout adolescence stretches to accommodate the current day Gordon – one who is fearless, spirited, and exuberant. After decades of internalizing a denial of self to take up less space, Gordon is finally ready for disturbance.

In Almost a Very Rare Thing, perhaps the artist’s most personal work, Gordon turns to an intimate struggle with trichotillomania to make sense of the disorder. Two figures sit silently in front of one another on a rocking boat in the dead of night. One of them is completely nude, while the other is clothed in minimal, mismatched underwear. The nude figure turns her back to the viewer, solemnly handing over a handful of hair to the apprehensive figure opposite to her. At the top of the nude figure head, there is a circular bald patch presumably from the hair she is giving away. They are surrounded by small lily pads scattered across the lake, eliciting a ritualistic meeting, an exchange that feels painful but anticipated.  Gordon often alludes to her mental health battles in interviews as the topic comes up periodically in her paintings. This, too, is a confrontation with the self, albeit one that is more uncomfortable than the childish scenes that Gordon loves. The artist struggles with trichotillomania, a compulsive disorder in which one’s uncontrollable urge leads them to pull out their hair, eyelashes, or eyebrows. Gordon also delves into her life-long experience with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), in which the individual is subjected to patterned intrusive thoughts that cause them to repeat certain actions or behaviors. Both conditions vary from one to another, yet, the experience often leaves people with heightened anxiety and hyper awareness among other side effects. Almost a Very Rare Thing is a powerful translation of Gordon’s inner battles, one that simmers under the surface of all the other characters she had assumed in other works. No one is making a splash, as both figures let the calm currents of the lake carry them through. Yet, something about the exchange leaves a simmering taste of mourning, a passing of pain from one to another. Whereas day time is reserved for the artist to explore uncensored and playful versions of herself as we have seen in Sore Loser or Garden Troll, the nighttime is reserved for intense introspection that ventures towards the artist’s deepest insecurities. Gordon articulates, “Having OCD, I’m very aware of how things fit on my body. When I was younger I was very sensitive to fabric and textures… I think that’s why in Almost a Very Rare Thing the butt crack is out. It’s very particular. And I was also very picky with clothes because I didn’t have the standard skinny body type.” Unlike her Asian American peers and counterparts, Gordon’s experience speaks to a larger theme of unbelonging, a denial of space, and a demoralizing rejection that plague Asian American thoughts.

But Gordon opts to be an active participant of her own healing rather than a passive saboteur of her life. She paints versions of herself over and over to assert her own individuality as a gateway to radical self-love. She reflects, “Growing up, I guess I had a hard time seeing myself as a person. Painting myself o solidly is a way of making myself feel more permanent and present.” The artist refuses the impulses to shrink herself, as she had moved through the majority of life doing so. Rather, by painting herself as all the versions she longs to achieve, Gordon expands her own universe and manifest herself as a Renaissance woman, capable of taking up even more and more space as she had thought she was allowed to. There is Sasha Gordon as a masterful violinist in Concert Mistress, as the tennis player in Sore Loser, as a joint-blazing inspiration in Muse I, or as Boticelli Venus in Like Froth. Gordon is everything, everywhere, all at once because she is able to paint herself into these worlds that she felt had been shut off from her for her life. In My Friend Will Be Me, the artist reassures us that she is limitless on the canvas. Following the rite of passage that is the artist-in-studio portrait, My Friend Will Be Me is a gleeful glimpse into the joy of shapeshifting that art affords Gordon. A blue nude figure, presumably the artist herself, stands smiling widely as she finishes up a brushstroke on the half-finished painting in front of her. The artist’s apron covers the rest of her body but is cleverly and wittily tucked between her cleavage. The painting-inside-a-painting shows a refreshed woman rising up above some Japanese folding screens. In her natural habitat, the artist is airbrushed and glowing under the magnificent blue hue she has casted herself under.  Gordon’s reliance on art as a tool of self-inspection results in boundless possibilities of what the artists can be once she is no longer constraint by the painful experiences that both shaped her and held her back. On the canvas, all the Sashas that Gordon ever dreamed of come alive.

Just like she did in Sore Loser, Gordon understands the two sides of the coin all too well. She knows the high of winning and the lows of losing, because she’s been both the huntsman and the prey. In the diptych The Archer, the forced target raises a pretend thumbs-up to her hunter, signifying that it was quite alright for them to keep going, for them to keep shooting at her, until they achieve their goal of hitting the apple placed at the top of her head. The left panel of the target is gloomy as the character’s expression darkens with dread. Her right arm is tied behind her back, alluding to the fact that she has no choice but to comply with her subjectification. Meanwhile, on the right panel, the archer confidently pulls back the string with a smirk, aiming with one eye closed, preparing to for another shot at her target. Both are half-nude and wearing blue jeans. This dichotomy lies at the heart of Gordon’s works: one gets the sense that she’s rooting for both sides, that she’s been on both sides, and that this very tension between two extremities is the beating pulse of her captivating canvas. The tug of war between different versions of Gordon materializes through her fears, as Gordon expresses her efforts to explain the disconnect she has been groomed to feel by a racial, heteronormative, and prejudiced world. Gordon quotes, “I’m trying to show this feeling of wrongness one has all the time – that feeling of wrongness also came through my queerness.” Caught in the stream of political debates, she adds, “I felt there is the “me” who is present but there’s also this other, external force that’s judging and controlling what I do.” The Archer implores the conflicting tendencies of one to subject themselves to pain because that’s what they have been taught their whole life. Gordon understands this deeply. She has held the bow but has also been hit by the arrow; she is both the archer and the prey.

All in all, the fun façade of Gordon’s poppy color palette and glossy figures reflect the difficult truths and painful journeys that Gordon had to unlearn. It is a weaving together of imagination as well as introspection, which Gordon understands cannot exist without one another in the route to radical self-love. It is, more important, a vessel in which she uses to carve out a safe space where inhibitions take charge instead of reservations. Speaking of one of her inspiration, photographer Ren Huang, Gordon writes, “It’s so risqué, and there’s something bizarre about his subjects’ poses; I feel like no one has shown Asian people doing these weird movements. I always thought Asian people had to be under the radar and assimilate to their surroundings because I had to do that. I thought I couldn’t be loud or stand out – it felt very unsafe. But his photos are so odd and almost gruesome. It’s beautiful that he could capture that through people who looked like me. It made me want to make equally strange paintings.” Though the strange forms Gordon loves to paint are figments of her imagination, there’s nothing unreal and insincere about her fierce self-love and acceptance, which should inspire us all to take ourselves less seriously, and embrace ourselves more authentically.

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Contributor: Uyen Dinh
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li