A never-ending story

The trouble with Douglas Gordon is not that his films are slow-moving. Though the 1996 Turner Prize-winner is still best known for 24-hour Psycho, in which he slowed down Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho from 24 frames per second to two frames per minute (thus stretching the action from 109 minutes to a whole day), his later work could be described as almost frenetic.

But having a lot of movement, in which nothing much happens to very little purpose, doesn't help either. The new video, Don't Think About It, is on a half-hour loop, yet all we see is Gordon's left hand as it swings back and forth, slapping the camera or occasionally covering the lens. The press release helpfully points out that the hand suggests suffocation. But rather, it seems to suggest the repetitive movements of someone who, like the viewer, is just plain bored.

Douglas's Polaroid photographs of hands painted with black spots in the centre of each palm (pictured) are, we're told, derived from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, where a black spot is the mark of death. The imposition of a narrative frame isn't helpful to an artist not noted for narrative gifts.

Less factitious is Francis Alÿs's animation The Last Clown. To a backdrop of music, a man walks a road to nowhere. To a burst of canned laughter, he periodically trips over a dog that rushes into the frame from the opposite direction. A succinct distillation of our often Samuel Beckett-like travails.

Douglas Gordon and Francis Alÿs
Until June 30, Lisson Gallery, 52-54 Bell Street NW1, Mon to Fri 10am to 6pm, Sat 10am to 5pm, free.
Tel: 020 7724 2739
www.lisson.co.uk
Tube: Edgware Road