The video artist, photographer and painter Douglas Gordon is regarded an important representative of contemporary conceptual media art.
Douglas Gordon was born in Glasgow in 1966. In his childhood and adolescence Douglas Gordon was confronted with contemporary mass media, which had decisive influence on his art.
Douglas Gordon studied at the Glasgow School of Art between 1984 and 1988. Afterwards Douglas Gordon moved to London, where he completed his education at Slade School of Fine Arts from 1988 to 1990. In the 1990s Douglas Gordon was active at the "Transmissions Gallery" in Glasgow, he attained international recognition together with artists such as Christine Borland, Ross Sinclair, Martin Boyce and Simon Starling.
For his media art Douglas Gordon often uses his personal memories as central themes. An example of this tendency is his early installation "List of Names" from 1990: All people the artist has ever met appear on a list of 1440 names. Douglas Gordon also uses famous images to create a confusing effect by alienating them. This is the case with, for instance, the famous video project "24 Hour Psycho", for which he plays Hitchcock's film icon "Psycho" backwards without audio track and at reduced speed. For numerous other video works Douglas Gordon also uses already existing material, though not always as famous as the aforementioned. The sound increasingly plays a role in these projects, recently they have become more and more elaborate and complex.
In 1996 Douglas Gordon received the renowned Turner Prize, in 2012 the Käthe-Kollwitz-Prize from the Berlin Academy of Arts. Works by Douglas Gordon are on display at acclaimed museums, such as the New York Museum of Modern Art and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. Douglas Gordon lives and works in Glasgow and New York.