GORDON, Melissa; MELZACKA, Alicja
Portals

I am not motivated to paint objects that are recognizable as such. Doing so belies an action whose aim is to occupy short spans of attention, like advertising. Instead, my reason for speaking in the medium of painting is precisely because it occupies time in a weirder, less linear way.
Or rather: what is unknown, un-recognizable, in that it looms spectre-like beyond our field of vision or floats to the top, like minerals in water. Call that magical practices, science fiction, modeling, fortune-telling, etc.
I am not speaking about the duality of representation and abstraction. Let’s go back to Jo Baer, and what she says about illusion on flat surfaces: it is and has always been “some” fiction. How you enact that is up to you.
—Melissa Gordon, from the exhibition text for Portals, 2024

This zine, that was published in conjunction with Melissa Gordon’s exhibition Portals at Beige, Brussels, gathers:

• an essay by Alicja Melzacka that discusses what can be the “right language” to write about/nearby painting; composed in relation with Gordon’s show, and in conversation with the artist, the text notably deals with the “weird” that abstraction may invoke or create;

• an essay by Gordon, which echoes Melzacka’s text and further discusses the notion of the unknown; 

• the transcript of a conversation between Gordon and fellow painter R. H. Quaytman, that happened in the context of Portals; 

• last but not least, documentation of the show…

Self-Published, 2025
Zines / Painting / Conversations