For over five decades, Gun Gordillo has occupied a singular space in the firmament of light art. Through a practice that bridges the historical weight of bronze and lead with the ethereal volatility of neon, she explores the delicate tension between the visible and the felt.
In the landscape of contemporary art, there are few practitioners who can claim to have fundamentally shifted the vernacular of a medium. Gun Gordillo is one of them. For more than fifty years, the Danish Swedish artist has treated light not merely as a means of illumination, but as a primary sculptural material, one possesses both the capacity for immense delicacy and a disruptive, vibrant energy. Her work, which spans international public commissions and intimate wall based reliefs, exists at the intersection of European constructivism and a highly personal, poetic expressionism. It is a practice defined by the dialogue between heavy, grounded materials and the weightless, transient quality of neon.
Gordillo does not simply place lights within a space; she uses illuminated form to carve into the atmosphere, creating environments that feel both architecturally rigid and emotionally fluid. Whether working with the durability of dolerite or the fragile transparency of plexiglass, her aim remains consistent: to capture the elusive. In her hands, the neon tube is transformed from its commercial associations into a gestural tool, akin to a brushstroke in three dimensions. This ongoing investigation into the properties of light has established her as a pioneer, a reputation solidified through decades of exhibition history in the major art capitals of Europe.
At Edition Solenne, our collaboration with Gordillo represents a focused entry point into this expansive career. By translating her mastery of three dimensional form into the medium of patinated bronze, we explore the shadows that light leaves behind. To understand these works, one must first understand the journey that led Gordillo from the rigid structures of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts to the luminous chaos of Cairo, and eventually to the legendary Galerie Denise René in Paris.
Origins
Born in Lund, Sweden, in 1945, Gun Gordillo’s formal artistic education took place during a transformative period for European sculpture. She graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1975, having studied there since 1969. This was a time of radical questioning regarding the role of the object, and Gordillo found herself drawn to the clean lines and mathematical rigor of kinetic and constructivist art. Following her studies, she would later return to the Academy as an associate professor, helping to shape the next generation of Scandinavian artists with her precise approach to material and space.
However, the most significant catalyst for her lifelong obsession with light occurred just before her graduation. In 1974, Gordillo traveled to Egypt, a journey that would forever alter her relationship with the public square. In Cairo, she encountered a city vibrating with large, glowing public scripts. These neon signs, often in Arabic, functioned as an abstract visual language for a visitor unfamiliar with the script. She was captivated by the way these glowing symbols occupied the nocturnal space, existing as both message and pure, luminous form. This meeting with the urban, public script provided a turning point, offering a glimpse into how light could be used to create an abstract vocabulary that was at once industrial and mystical.
Returning to her atelier with this newfound inspiration, Gordillo quickly integrated neon into her practice. It became the central element around which all other materials rotated. This was not the neon of advertising, but a distilled, concentrated energy. By combining this fragile light with robust, industrial materials like lead, stone, and metal, she began to build a body of work that interrogated the boundaries of the beautiful. For Gordillo, the beauty of a composition often contains rebellious elements, a tension that makes the viewer feel both comforted and slightly uneasy.
The practice
Gordillo’s career is marked by a deep commitment to the physicality of making. Her practice has long been a dual life, split between the northern sensibilities of Denmark and Sweden and the avant-garde traditions of France. For fifteen years, she lived and worked in Paris with her husband, the late artist Freddy Fraek. During this period, both artists were closely associated with Galerie Denise René, a venue famous for its promotion of kinetic, optical, and constructivist art. Work with René placed Gordillo in conversation with the giants of European abstraction, yet she maintained a uniquely sensitive and poetic touch that set her apart from the often cold objectivity of her peers.
Her oeuvre is characterized by a playful yet disciplined combination of materials. She frequently employs transparent and reflective elements, such as mirrors or plexiglass, to expand the physical limits of the sculpture. In these works, the neon light is doubled and tripled, creating reflections that open what she describes as a luminous port into another world, one that reaches beyond the physical exhibition space. Her installations are often described as having a poetic musikalitet (musicality), a sense that the forms are vibrating or moving even when stationary.
Neon light quickly became the central material in Gordillo's works, the element that has ever since played both against and alongside a wide range of sculptural materials.
This musicality was recently on full display at Copenhagen Contemporary (2024, 25), where a major solo project showcased the breadth of her light installations. The exhibition featured seminal works like Porta Blanca (2000), where lines of neon fall from above like rapid marks on paper, and Stratos (2010), an atmospheric whirl of light that mimics a dense, infinite fog. These works demonstrate how Gordillo has mastered the ability to transform light into something tactile, something that can be lived within rather than just looked at.
References and influences
While the trip to Egypt provided the initial spark, Gordillo’s influences are broad and deeply rooted in art history. Her work carries echoes of the Bauhaus in its marriage of art and architecture, and she has frequently been commissioned to integrate her sculptures into the fabric of buildings. These art-architecture integrations can be found in cities such as Basel, Paris, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, where she has created major installations for world famous companies and public sites. This ability to operate on a monumental scale while maintaining a personal, poetic angle is a hallmark of her career.
She is often grouped with artists who explored light as a basic artistic expression, yet her work maintains a decidedly personal angle. Unlike the harsh stridency of commercial signage, Gordillo’s neon is soft, painterly, and intentional. She treats the gas-filled tubes as a medium for drawing, often curving and twisting the glass into shapes that mimic the fluidity of a charcoal sketch. This painterly approach is evident in her recent work Roxi (2023), a red curl of neon that twists alongside hard steel, acting as a mischievous punctuation mark in the conversation between materials.
In conversation
In discussing her work, it becomes clear that Gordillo views light as a living entity. She describes neon as having its own concentrated energy, something that is simultaneously enclosed, vibrant, fleeting, and impossible to catch. This paradox, the desire to capture something that is inherently uncatchable, is what drives her experimentation. She speaks often of the tension between fravær og nærvær (absence and presence), and how light can make the invisible visible.
Neon light adds an extra dimension to the works. It carries a particular movement and underscores tensions such as absence and presence, invisibility and clarity, weight and fragility.
In her studio, the process is one of constant trial. She works with the resistance of materials, finding a natural way to cooperate with the weights of lead or the coldness of stone. This positive, optimistic attitude toward the material world allows her to push the borders of the beautiful, creating combinations that might otherwise seem contradictory. There is a sense of moving forward, a refusal to remain stagnant in one stylistic era, which has allowed her practice to remain relevant across six decades of changing trends.
The works with Edition Solenne
Released in 2020 through Edition Solenne, Bronzina represents a significant moment in Gun Gordillo’s recent practice. While much of her fame rests on her use of neon, this work sees her returning to the permanence of cast bronze, though it remains deeply informed by her history with light. The sculpture is a wall based relief that measures 68 x 58 cm, an intimate scale that allows for a detailed examination of its complex surface. It is a work that captures the essence of a narrative cast in metal, a physical record of the hand that made it.
Bronzina is executed in a black and slightly green patinated bronze, a finish that gives the work a sense of archaeological weight. Each piece in the limited edition of 30 (+6 AP) was meticulously crafted at the renowned Fonderia Artistica Mariani in Pietrasanta, Italy. This foundry, established in 1952, is famous for its precision and its commitment to traditional lost-wax casting methods. The choice of foundry is reflective of Gordillo’s late-career interest in absolute quality; by using the same methods that have served sculptors for centuries, she ensures that Bronzina carries a gravity and a detail that few other materials can provide.
The form of Bronzina itself is a direct reference to Gordillo’s mastery of three dimensional neon light. The way the bronze weaves across the wall mimics the paths of her illuminated tubes, but here the light is replaced by shadow and the rich texture of the patina. In this work, the lightness of neon is inverted; the shape remains gestural and fluid, but it is hardened into a heavy alloy. This creates a compelling dialogue between weight and weightlessness, a central theme throughout her fifty year career. The slightly green oxidation against the deep black of the bronze reminds the viewer of the passage of time and the natural evolution of materials.
To own Bronzina is to possess a narrative that has evolved over four decades of artistic endeavor. It is a work that challenges and broadens the viewer's artistic horizons by making them more engaged with the physical reality of sculpture. The surface of the bronze is not flat or silent, but full of the subtle irregularities and textures born from the lost-wax process. Each edition is unique in its final patina, hand applied with heat and chemistry, ensuring that while the form is consistent, the emotional resonance of the object remains individual. It stands as a gateway for the collector, inviting them into Gordillo’s realm of unexpected material combinations.
Closing
Gun Gordillo remains one of the most vital voices in the story of European light art. Her ability to remain curious, to continue challenging the limitations of her materials, is what gives her work its enduring power. Whether she is carving a white luminous port into a gallery wall or casting a silent narrative in bronze, her work serves as a reminder that art is a method of exploration. It is a search for clarity in the midst of shadows, a way to capture the concentrated energy of the world and hold it, if only for a moment, in a frame of light and metal.
As she continues her work between Copenhagen and the international stage, Gordillo’s legacy is one of poetic resilience. She has taken the industrial, the cold, and the rigid and transformed them into something deeply human. In the works created for Edition Solenne, we see the culmination of this journey: a mastery of form that requires no secondary light source to shine, as the strength of the composition and the history of the hand are more than enough to illuminate the room.
