Gagosian is pleased to announce Magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all, an exhibition of works by Douglas Gordon centered on Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006), a double-screen film produced in collaboration with Philippe Parreno that follows legendary French footballer Zinédine Zidane over the course of a single match (the presentation’s title quotes the subject’s final line in the film). Magic, which also includes neon and vinyl text works by Gordon, opens at the gallery’s Beverly Hills location on July 16, marking twenty-five years since the artist’s 2001 survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. 

The exhibition also coincides with the FIFA World Cup 2026, which is being hosted in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, with some matches being played in Los Angeles. Gordon, a lifelong football fan, believes in this event’s unifying power, and in “the beautiful game” as a locus for the hopes and dreams of players and supporters alike. In football, joy and belief can be transformed instantly into heartache and despair, a transition that resonates deeply with Gordon’s key themes of ecstasy and pain, good and evil, life and death.

Zidane exists in seventeen different versions, many of which reside in institutional collections including those of the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Shot on seventeen cameras, it follows Zidane in real time over the course of a match between his Spanish club Real Madrid and Villarreal at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid on April 23, 2005. Capturing its subject from multiple angles, Zidane presents an intimate portrait of a superstar, recording his movements even when the action unfolds elsewhere. Edited together with TV commentary and the roar of 72,000 spectators, it is soundtracked by Scottish post-rock band Mogwai, whose music adds another layer of cinematic intensity. Zidane is also being shown this summer at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Bass Museum, Miami; Pérez Art Museum Miami; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, as well as at various film festivals.

On the gallery’s walls, ceiling, and floor—and spilling onto the building’s exterior and the street beyond—is a selection of Gordon’s text works, including such key early examples in vinyl as Meaning and Location (1990). This renders a biblical promise in two different versions in circular form, distinguishing them through the shift of a comma: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise” and “Truly, I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise.” The work is characteristic of Gordon’s texts of the time in its use of a quote related to faith; more recent examples such as SELF-PORTRAIT AS AN ACTOR (2017) are less readily traceable to specific sources. Neon works like Tears are not Enough (2023), which is derived from a lyric by synth-pop band ABC, are concerned less with explicitly devotional language and more with broader ideas around the emotional connections forged by popular culture. For this exhibition, in part to celebrate the World Cup and to connect with the diverse communities that live in the region, the text works have also been rendered in languages commonly spoken in Los Angeles, including Armenian, Farsi, and Korean—as well as a much less widespread Chumash language.