Superhumanatural

Glasgow artist, Douglas Gordon, recently returned from New York, has a mega-exhibition of this title in Edinburgh, centred both on the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Botanic Gardens in the city. He recently exhibited darkly but with success in New York. A former winner of the Turner Prize (1996) at the age of 30, and of the Premio 2000 at the Venice Biennale (1997) he also won the Hugo Boss prize in 1998. One of the stars of the Edinburgh show is the French footballer Zidane, a national hero there. With his film now entitled 'Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait' (shown at the Edinburgh Festival, 2006) he has established a new following in football fan circles. Zidane was the subject of a 17-camera, single game presentation. Gordon was a product of the pioneering Environmental Art specialism at the famed Glasgow School of Art in the 1980s. A new piece showing in Edinburgh is 'Cranach's Tree', which examines images of 'good and evil' from a 15th-century woodcut by Cranach, working around a dead apple tree in the Botanic Gardens. Such a preoccupation with death recurs creatively in Douglas Gordon's expanding oeuvre, tinged often with nostalgia. But Zidane at least, is alive and kicking (even butting).