A studio visit with photographer Daniel Gordon seemed seasonally apt when I swung by the photographer's Brooklyn space: the floor was thickly carpeted with bright, crinkly leaves (of paper), among which slabs of meat covered in flies and severed hairy limbs stretching out from the pulpy waves (also all made of paper) could be identified, resembling a goofy — and recyclable — Halloween display. Buried among the sculptural forms and computer printouts were the operating-table-ready scalpels that Gordon favors for his 3-D collage practice, for which he builds sculptures from Google-sourced images that he then photographs. While this added another touch of the macabre to the workspace, during my stay, at least, no blood was shed.
Meanwhile, it was hard to avoid the anxiety that comes with trampling over plants, vegetables, faces, and other body parts, when all around the studio hang test prints and photographs depicting these same sculptural forms. In the middle of the visit, I find that in avoiding stepping on a paper potato, I throw my whole body weight onto a paper rubber plant lying on the floor — the photograph of which I'm admiring as I crush its subject. (That photo is  featured in the artist's upcoming book, tentatively titled "Bodies and Parts," due out from Damiani in fall 2011.) Gordon, however, is quick to reassure me that he likes it when his works get mashed underfoot, letting them constantly evolve into new forms. "The process has really become improvised just by the nature of my studio, and what I stumble upon," he says.

Gordon is quick to draw a parallel between his studio space and the Internet, both of which are "this big jumbled mess," he says. "Online it seems seamless, but here it's just a mess. It really is a mess online too, but we just can't see it." The artist, who is reading the 1881-1906 volume of John Richardson's massive Picasso biography (though he prefers Matisse biographer Hilary Spurling's writing style), led me safely through the thicket of his studio, talking about how to make cobwebs by letting hot glue dry, how delicious "Sunday sauce" from Frankie's is, and why there are so many potatoes scattered around the room.

“I've made a lot of potatoes this summer, but they never even wound up in a picture," Gordon said on that last subject. "I made like 20 potatoes and now they're just there. But maybe six months down the line, when they're all mushed up, maybe something will happen.”