No Touch

Eli Ridgway Gallery is pleased to present No Touch, an exhibition of sound and sculpture by Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon. Gordon's work focuses on the numerous potentials of sound as an architectural, immersive tool for perception. Inspired by the research of sound pioneers Ernst Chladni and Alvin Lucier, the installation works in No Touch visually and perceptually replicate the impact of sound waves on the body in various situations.

The experience of sound in an acoustically altered environment presents a renewed recognition of space through non-visual means. By exploring this awareness and reverting it back into a visual context, Gordon challenges the relationships between sight and sound in form and function. Harnessing the postulates of well-known sound theory with various methods — including amplification, distortion, and absorption — the artist's intuitive investigations create various audible confrontations from unique pairings of acoustical materials. Combining classic building provisions such as drywall, cement, glass, and wood with sound-altering mediums such as felt, foam, and fabric, Gordon manipulates a sonic experience by exploring the reverberance of these adapted architectures.

No Touch includes three new sound works — one absorbent, one reflective, and one that incrementally produces moments of each. In the guise of the ability of light to travel endlessly into space or be redirected from its path, the sound distortions of No Touch are Gordon's playful interferences with ambiance taken-for-granted.

Gordon received her MFA in Studio Practice from Stanford University, and is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, the Phelan, Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship, and a Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency. She has exhibited at the San Francisco Arts Commission, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, ICA London, and Queens Nails Projects, and has performed at sound and music festivals with the group 0th. No Touch was Jacqueline's first solo exhibition with the gallery.