Rising art world star Sasha Gordon recently sat down with actress and artist Lucy Liu for an intimate conversation about fear, identity, and the challenges of sudden fame. The 27-year-old painter, known for her saturated and warped self-portraits, is preparing for her new solo exhibition "Haze" opening at David Zwirner gallery, where she continues to explore themes of anxiety and eroticism through her distinctive visual narrative.
Gordon, who often sleeps in her studio, maintains what she describes as a "tumultuous relationship" with her own reflection, which she transforms into compelling self-portraits that allow her to control her own narrative. During their Zoom conversation, Liu praised Gordon's confidence and artistic talent, describing her as "delicious" and noting how her personality translates powerfully into her visual work.
The young artist revealed that she has always been drawn to painting subjects that frighten her, particularly exploring themes of death and bodily anxiety. "I'm just a very anxious person, and I paint about my anxieties and ambiguity," Gordon explained. "Death also scares me - the idea of the whole world going away and spending so much time in a body that I've had such a confusing and tumultuous relationship with."
Gordon's artistic journey began in childhood when her mother noticed her obsessive drawing habits, starting with circles drawn repeatedly in children's books. By third grade, she was already working with oil paints, a remarkably advanced medium for such a young artist. Growing up in upstate New York at a sports-centered high school where arts programs weren't appreciated, Gordon found solace in painting classes outside her town.
The conversation touched on the challenges of monetizing intimate artistic work and navigating social media fame. Gordon admitted to thinking about the commercial aspects of her art daily but tries not to let it impact her creative process. "I actually kind of think back on when I was younger, when I didn't have Instagram and when I wasn't selling work. It was just such a pure form of expression for me," she reflected.
As a mixed-race artist with a Korean mother and white father, Gordon discussed her struggles with identity and tokenization in the art world. She described feeling disoriented about her racial identity growing up, particularly after learning her mother had marked her as white on census forms. "I only knew of my mom and truly just you and Charlie's Angels and Kill Bill. I was really alone," she told Liu, referencing the limited Asian representation she encountered in her youth.
Gordon's artistic process involves both memory work and photographic references. For smaller pieces, she relies on her intimate knowledge of her own body, developed through years of self-observation and analysis. For larger paintings, she uses photo references to achieve the sculptural lighting effects she desires, aiming to make her figures appear "voluptuous and rounded" with a sense of weight and presence.
The upcoming "Haze" exhibition represents Gordon's most challenging work to date, featuring what she describes as "one ambiguous narrative" that explores the limits of the human body. The show includes scenes of hazing and characters on the brink of death, marking a more direct confrontation with mortality than in her previous work. Despite the dark themes, Gordon maintains her trademark injections of humor and wit throughout the pieces.
Both artists discussed the pressures of living as public images and the courage required to create vulnerable work. Liu, drawing from her decades in the entertainment industry, recognized the challenges of existing as an image while risking being consumed by it. Gordon acknowledged the difficulty of presenting intimate work to an increasingly wide audience, admitting she sometimes has to avoid reading comments to maintain her creative focus.
The conversation concluded with Gordon expressing her desire to continue evolving her artistic practice beyond identity-focused work, while acknowledging that her existence as a mixed-race artist naturally informs her perspective. "I want my work to look like me because I want to see that more," she explained. "It's not like I just want to paint Asian women, it's just who I am."
