Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: Talk

One of the most important and influential artists of her generation, Gonzalez-Foerster’s practice was one of the first to focus on the exhibition itself as an artistic medium. Her particular interest in space, alongside a preoccupation with literature, cinema, media, and technology has resulted in a uniquely cross-disciplinary practice, though her work primarily takes the form of environments, film and most recently, performance – or what she terms, apparitions.

Gonzalez-Foerster's practice is taking cues from film, literature, architecture, philosophy and critical theory. Through immersive installations that include film or are suggestive of filmic tropes, Gonzalez-Foerster uses the medium of experience as a way to question the essences of objects and the meaning of context. Trafficking in a unique type of psychological collage within works and between them, her varied oeuvre has taken myriad forms, including collected fragments of modernist buildings in Brazil, an autobiographical hanging of 40 years of her own wardrobe, and an immersive light and sound environment meant to evoke the chaos, dread, and wonderment of future lives. In her latest works, Gonzalez-Foerster uses live performance and holographic projections that conflate characters from history, literature and film with their sociological sources and ramifications. Often relying on elliptical texts that place equal weight on fiction, fact, and the pluralism of memory, Gonzalez-Foerster creates heterogeneous worlds that thrive on the tension between finite and infinite, the empirical and the dramaturgical.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster was born 1965 in Strasbourg, France. She studied at École des Beaux- Arts, Grenoble, L’École du Magasin, Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble and Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques, Paris. The artist lives and works in Paris and Rio de Janeiro.

She participated in the Venice Biennale in 1990, 1993, 1999, 2003 and 2009. Two major installations by the artist are currently included in May You Live In Interesting Times – 58th Venice Biennale, on view through November 24, 2019.

Gonzalez-Foerster participated in Documenta11 in 2002. In 2008, she created TH.2058 as part of The Unilever Series in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London. The artist received the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Award in 2002.

Selected solo exhibitions include: Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: Martian Dreams Ensemble, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig (2018); Costumes and Wishes for 21st Century, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster in collaboration with Manuel Raeder and BLESS, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2016); Pynchon Park, MAAT Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon (2016); Opera-House, Huis