Myopic View (1929/2021)

"I am looking from inside out of their spaces, through an other's eyes, aware of forgotten genealogies and aware of codifying new ones." Melissa Gordon, 2025.

Myopic View (1929/2021) is part of a series of paintings in which Melissa Gordon depicts abandoned modernist artists' studios in Paris. In the 1920s, these places were synonymous with artistic freedom, but then they became vacant, abandoned by their occupants fleeing the rise of fascism. Gordon visited a dozen of these studios in 2021 and photographed the view outside.

This painting shows the studio of the artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp. The years in the title refer to the year in which the property was built, and to the date of a personal account of a failed border crossing, represented by the additional layer that has been painted over the image. Gordon deliberately erases place-related details to emphasise the frustration of physical borders; to some they are intangible, to others they represent major obstacles.

The keyhole sculpture on the right alludes to the tension between exclusion and access, a recurring theme in Gordon's work. Together with the windows – evocative of modernist abstract painting but here painted shut – they are symbols of an open versus a shuttered view: what is there to see, who is allowed to look, and what remains hidden from view?