How the Painter Sasha Gordon Marshaled Her Monsters

"In the days leading up to her first show at the David Zwirner gallery, the artist Sasha Gordon was painting 17 hours at a clip, starting late in the afternoon and continuing until 11 the next morning. She was relentless. When she'd finish one section of a painting, she'd take a quick nap to clean her mind, then go at it again. "When I am painting," Gordon said, "I usually get fast toward the end. I'm excited, but I'm also really nervous and stressed.""

"This time I was really hard on myself. I had gotten better at painting, but I had higher standards. Her ascendancy in the art world had been swift. This show was highly anticipated. "And then it sucked because I was running out of time ... So usually I can sacrifice things, but I had such ambitious ideas for the painting ..." The day came when the paintings were scheduled to be moved from her studio to the gallery."

"Gordon called the show "Haze." It took up three rooms - nine paintings Gordon had made featuring herself as the protagonist (and often antagonist) in scenes from a parallel dimension that she calls, but only to herself, SashaWorld. In "Haze," these figures seem to be facing an apocalypse. They are suffused in glowy, surreal, ecstatic light. In many of the paintings, one character is tortured by others."

Sasha Gordon prepared an exhibition called Haze at David Zwirner by working marathon painting sessions, sometimes 17 hours straight, and continuing in the gallery until deadlines loomed. The show filled three rooms with nine large paintings that portray Gordon as multiple selves in a parallel realm she terms SashaWorld. The images blend apocalyptic scenarios, surreal luminous color, and darkly comic violence, including scenes of alter-egos harming one another. The works balance ambition and narrative excess, mixing brutal subject matter with absurdity and humor while reflecting elevated standards and intense personal labor.

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