Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Last updated
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
Oliver Mark - Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Paris 2002.jpg
Gonzalez-Foerster in 2002
Born (1965-06-30) 30 June 1965 (age 59)
Strasbourg, France
NationalityFrench
EducationÉcole du Magasin
Institute des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques
Website dgf5.com

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (born 30 June 1965) is a French visual artist and educator. She is known for her work in video projection, photography, and art installations. She has worked in landscaping, design, and writing. "I always look for experimental processes. I like the fact that at the beginning I don't know how to do things and then, slowly, I start learning. Often exhibitions don't give me this learning possibility anymore." [1]

Contents

She lives and works in Paris and Rio de Janeiro.

Biography

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster was born in Strasbourg, France in 1965. [2] [3] [4] At the age of 17, she worked as a museum guard in Grenoble while studying at the École du Magasin of the National Centre of Contemporary Art in Grenoble. She also studied at the Institute des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques, in Paris. She began her career as an artist in the 1990s, working primarily in film.

Work

Inspired by film, literature, modernist architecture, and art history, her work is often characterized by a quiet, intimate interrogation of contemporary urban life. Often she will use fragments from her international travels in her work and reassembles them into something new. "My approach to art is quite radical. It has more to do with theater and staging than making objects such as paintings or sculptures. Sometimes I think that the fetishism of objects is pathetic. It's one way to deal with art, but I'm obsessed with other things". [1] She also hopes that her installations will encourage people to interact with them. "I want to coax people to engage with my art, in the same way that a writer might entice people to read a book". [1]

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Expodrome, 2008, The Neon Parallax, Geneva Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Expodrome, 2008, permanent installation, Geneva.jpg
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Expodrome, 2008, The Neon Parallax, Geneva

Her early work was mainly short, minimalistic and oneiric films. She now collaborates on everything from the writing of a science fiction novel with fellow artist Philippe Parreno to working with rock singer Alain Bashung on set design. In 2008 she worked with designer M&M to realize the typeface of "Expodrome" a large time-based luminous public art work on the rooftop of a building in Geneva. [5] In 2009, she collaborated with composer Ari Benjamin Meyers on “K62”, a performance shown at Performa 09, New York’s biennial festival of performing arts. [6] She has also collaborated with Nicolas Ghesquière on designing displays for Balenciaga boutiques in New York [7] [8] and Paris. [9] She has even designed a house for a collector in Tokyo.

For the season 2015–2016 in the Vienna State Opera Gonzalez-Foerster designed a large-scale picture (176 sqm) as part of the exhibition series "Safety Curtain", conceived by museum in progress. [10] [11]

Exhibitions

Her first solo exhibition in New York City, "Equinimod and Costumes" was held in 2014 at 303 Gallery and featured an art installation of her wardrobe. [12] [13] González-Foerster has had solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, the Dia Art Foundation, [14] the Kunsthalle Zürich, the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Tate Modern. [15]

She participated in the 2006 São Paulo Art Biennial, [16] and the 2009 Venice Biennale. [17]

Tate Modern's Turbine Hall installation

The show was entitled "The Unilever Series: Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: TH.2058" and appeared in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern in London [18] from October 14, 2008 to April 13, 2009. At the opening of the show Dominique said, " Some months ago, I used to wake up in the silence of the night to think about what I was going to do. But not anymore. People ask me, 'Are you scared?' No, I am not scared. If I was, I wouldn't do it. Rather, I'm excited. I am putting one third of my energy into just staying calm. The work is on such a scale that if you got too excited, you would explode,". [1] The show was her first public commission in the UK and filled half of the 3,400 square meter hall. "TH.2058 by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, imagines Tate Modern 50 years into the future, set in a London afflicted by perpetual rain. Tate Modern is being used as a shelter for people, a storage space for art works and for the remains of culture. The vast Turbine Hall is filled with monumental replicas of iconic sculptural works. Rows of bunk beds are scattered with books, and on a giant screen The Last Film is continuously running. Made up of short excerpts from science-fiction films, The Last Film suggests a potential state of catastrophe as well as the possibility of collective memory,". [1]

Hispanic Society of America installation

The installation at the Hispanic Society of America in New York was installed in 2009, and was entitled "chronotopes & dioramas". The Hispanic Society of America is a museum and research library with an impressive collection of paintings, decorative objects, books, documents, prints, and photographs. However, Dominique discovered it only had a limited supply of 20th century literature and wanted to fill in the gaps. She enlisted help from experts at the American Museum of Natural History. The project involved crafting three habitats in which volumes by nearly 40 authors replaced taxidermied fauna. One evokes water and verticality; another, aridity and flatness; the third, trailing vines. They represent three zones: North America, the Desert, and the Tropics. Aside from the books, each diorama contains a single, mute trace of human presence. In the underwater ocean scene there is an oil barrel. In the desert scene there are ruins of a concrete bunker. In the tropical scene there is a desolate, glass house. They each show the wear and tear of passing time. Many of the books in the dioramas are about anxiety and exile. She also created a mural-sized calligram (an arrangement of words that creates a related visual image). This is Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope; "functioning as the primary means for materializing time in space with the novel". The installation is housed in an annex to the library.

Collections

Gonzalez-Foerster's work is in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, [19] the Dia Art Foundation, the Guggenheim, the Louis Vuitton Foundation, the M+ Museum, the Moderna Museet, and the Tate Modern. [20]

Recognition

Gonzalez-Foerster was the recipient of an artist residency in Villa Kujoyama, Kyoto in 1996, the Mies van der Rohe Award in Krefeld in 1996, and the 2002 Marcel Duchamp Prize in Paris.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Centre Pompidou</span> Art museum in Paris, France

The Centre Pompidou, more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou, also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil, and the Marais. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of Richard Rogers, Su Rogers and Renzo Piano, along with Gianfranco Franchini.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nan Goldin</span> American photographer and activist

Nancy Goldin is an American photographer and activist. Her work explores in snapshot-style the emotions of the individual, in intimate relationships, and the bohemian LGBT subcultural communities, especially dealing with the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Her most notable work is The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. In the slideshow and monograph (1986) Goldin portrayed her chosen "family", meanwhile documenting the post-punk and gay subcultures. She is a founding member of the advocacy group P.A.I.N. against the opioid epidemic. She lives and works in New York City.

Pierre Huyghe is a French contemporary artist, who works in a variety of media from films and sculptures to public interventions and living systems. He lives and works in Paris and New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angela Bulloch</span> Canadian-born artist

Angela Bulloch, is a Canadian artist who often works with sound and installation; she is recognised as one of the Young British Artists. Bulloch lives and works in Berlin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothea Tanning</span> American painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet (1910–2012)

Dorothea Margaret Tanning was an American painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet. Her early work was influenced by Surrealism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebecca Horn</span> German visual artist (1944–2024)

Rebecca Horn was a German visual artist best known for her installation art, film directing and body modifications such as Einhorn (Unicorn), a body-suit with a very large horn projecting vertically from the headpiece. While living in Paris and Berlin, she worked in film, sculpture and performance, directing the films Der Eintänzer (1978), La ferdinanda: Sonate für eine Medici-Villa (1982) and Buster's Bedroom (1990).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ken Feingold</span> Artist

Kenneth Feingold is a contemporary American artist based in New York City. He has been exhibiting his work in video, drawing, film, sculpture, photography, and installations since 1974. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2004) and a Rockefeller Foundation Media Arts Fellowship (2003) and has taught at Princeton University and Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art and Science, among others. His works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Liverpool, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer & Kevin McCoy</span>

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy are an artistic duo and couple based in Brooklyn, NY. They work with interactive media, film, performance and installation to explore personal experience in relation to new technology, mass media, and global commerce. The McCoys are influenced by Lev Manovich and his theories on digital culture and their work often re-examines classic cinema, science fiction, or television through sculptural objects, net art, robotic movies or live performance. They were the recipients of the Creative Capital Award in the discipline of Emerging Fields in 2002 and the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011. In 2014, Kevin collaborated with Anil Dash to co-create Monegraph, short for “monetized graphics.” The work "Quantum", was included in Sotheby's "Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale" in June 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannah Wilke</span> American artist (1940–1993)

Hannah Wilke (born Arlene Hannah Butter; was an American painter, sculptor, photographer, video artist and performance artist. Her work is known for exploring issues of feminism, sexuality and femininity.

Philippe Parreno is a French contemporary artist, living and working in Paris. His works include films, installations, performances, drawings, and text.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shirazeh Houshiary</span> Iranian installation artist and sculptor

Shirazeh Houshiary is an Iranian-born English sculptor, installation artist, and painter. She lives and works in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Morris</span> English painter

Sarah Morris is an American and British artist. She lives in New York City in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rineke Dijkstra</span> Dutch photographer

Rineke Dijkstra HonFRPS is a Dutch photographer. She lives and works in Amsterdam. Dijkstra has been awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society, the 1999 Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize and the 2017 Hasselblad Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roni Horn</span> American visual artist and writer (born 1955)

Roni Horn is an American visual artist and writer. The granddaughter of Eastern European immigrants, she was born in New York City, where she lives and works. She is currently represented by Xavier Hufkens in Brussels and Hauser & Wirth. She is openly gay.

<i>Maman</i> (sculpture) Sculpture by Louise Bourgeois

Maman (1999) is a bronze, stainless steel, and marble sculpture in several locations by the artist Louise Bourgeois. The sculpture, which depicts a spider, is among the world's largest, measuring over 30 ft high and over 33 ft wide (9.27 x 8.91 x 10.24 metres). It includes a sac containing 32 marble eggs and its abdomen and thorax are made of rubbed bronze.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yael Bartana</span> Israeli artist, filmmaker and photographer

Yael Bartana is an Israeli artist, filmmaker and photographer, whose past works have encompassed multiple mediums, including photography, film, video, sound, and installation. Many of her pieces feature political or feminist themes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shilpa Gupta</span> Indian artist

Shilpa Gupta is a contemporary Indian artist based in Mumbai, India. Gupta's artistic practise encompasses a wide range of mediums, including manipulated found objects, video art, interactive computer-based installations, and performance.

Koo Jeong A is a South-Korean born mixed-media and installation artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cao Fei</span> Chinese artist

Cao Fei is a Chinese multimedia artist born in Guangzhou. Her work, which includes video, performance, and digital media, examines the daily life of Chinese citizens born after the Cultural Revolution. Her work explores China's widespread internet culture as well as the borders between dreams and reality. Cao has captured the rapid social and cultural transformation of contemporary China, highlighting the impact of foreign influences from the United States and Japan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ali Cherri</span> Lebanese Artist

Ali Cherri is a Lebanese artist working in video and installation. His varied practice focuses on documenting and presenting heritage and environment in Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Tate Modern Unilever series: Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's grand design". The Telegraph. 10 October 2008. Retrieved 15 December 2019.
  2. ↑ "Gonzalez-Foerster, Dominique". Centre national des arts plastiques. 1 July 2013. Archived from the original on 1 July 2013. Retrieved 15 December 2019.
  3. ↑ Phaidon Editors (2019). Great women artists. Phaidon Press. p. 158. ISBN   978-0714878775.{{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  4. ↑ "Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster". Edge.org. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  5. ↑ Expodrome by Dominique Gonzalez Foerster for the Neon Parallax, Geneva
  6. ↑ Emily Stokes (28 November 2009), Whose reality is it anyway?  Financial Times .
  7. ↑ Daisy Garnett (6 February 2003), From Paris with Love New York .
  8. ↑ Craig Kellogg (17 April 2003), Balenciaga Opens a Shop With That Lived-In Feeling New York Times .
  9. ↑ "The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation". The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. Retrieved 2022-02-17.
  10. ↑ "Safety Curtain 2015/2016". museum in progress. Retrieved 15 December 2019.
  11. ↑ Bier, Arielle (6 October 2015). "Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster Brings Helen Frankenthaler to the Opera". Artsy. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  12. ↑ "Dominique Gonzalez Foerster". The New Yorker . Retrieved 2022-12-05.
  13. ↑ "New York – Dominique Gonzales-Foerster: "Euqinimod & Costumes" at 303 Gallery Through May 31st, 2014". Art Observed (AO). Retrieved 2022-12-05.
  14. ↑ Jones, Kristin M. (March 2010). "Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster". Frieze (129). Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  15. ↑ "Dominique González-Foerster". Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  16. ↑ "Shortstories Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster". Esther Schipper. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  17. ↑ "Venice: The Palazzo at the Giardini, Part 1". Contemporary Art Daily. Archived from the original on 16 December 2019. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  18. ↑ "Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster". Artspace. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
  19. ↑ "Shortstories (Marquise, Gloria et Parc Central Taipei) | Centre Pompidou". www.centrepompidou.fr (in French). Retrieved 2020-08-04.[ permanent dead link ]

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.