An exhibition of works by Scottish artist Douglas Gordon, centered around his landmark double-screen film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006), will open at Gagosian Beverly Hills next month. Titled “Magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all,” the exhibition coincides with the FIFA World Cup 2026, which is being hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, with several matches taking place in Los Angeles.
Made in collaboration with French artist Philippe Parreno, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait follows the legendary French footballer Zinédine Zidane in real time over the course of a single match between his Spanish club Real Madrid and Villarreal at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid on April 23, 2005. Shot on 17 cameras and edited together with television commentary and the noise of 72,000 spectators, the film is soundtracked by Scottish post-rock band Mogwai. Capturing Zidane from multiple angles— including moments when play unfolds elsewhere on the pitch— it constructs an intimate portrait of one of the sport’s most celebrated figures.
The work exists in 17 versions, many held in major institutional collections including the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. This summer, it is also on view in New York at the Guggenheim Museum, in Miami at both the Bass Museum and Pérez Art Museum, and in Minneapolis at the Walker Art Center, as institutions across the U.S. celebrate the soccer tournament.
The Gagosian presentation also includes a selection of Gordon’s other works, among them the early vinyl piece Meaning and Location (1990) and the neon work Tears are not Enough (2023). For this exhibition, a number of the text works have been rendered in languages spoken across Los Angeles, including Armenian, Farsi, Korean, and the Indigenous American Chumash language.
The opening also marks 25 years since Gordon’s 2001 survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Explore Artsy’s World Cup content here.
