Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster was born in 1965 in Strasbourg, France. She lives and works in Paris. Gonzalez-Foerster 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 in Paris.

Gonzalez-Foerster has been exploring since 1990 the different modalities of sensory and cognitive relationship between bodies and spaces, real or fictitious, up to the point of questioning the distance between organic life and work. Metabolizing literary and cinematographic, architectural and musical, scientific and pop references, Gonzalez-Foerster creates “chambres” and “interiors”, “gardens”, “attractions” and “planets”, with respect to the multiple meanings that these terms take on in the works of Virginia Woolf or Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Brontë sisters or Thomas Pynchon, Joanna Russ or Philip K. Dick. This investigation of spaces extends to a questioning of the implicit neutrality of practices and exhibition spaces. Her “mises en espace”, “anticipations” and “apparitions” seek to invade the sensory domain of the viewers in order to operate intentional changes in their memory and imagination. Haunted by history and future, Gonzalez-Foerster’s works become containers where the artist incubates a form of subjectivity that does not yet exist. Through multiple international exhibitions, short films, productions and concerts, Gonzalez-Foerster’s mutant work contributes to the invention of new technologies of consciousness.

Selected solo exhibitions includes Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig (2018); Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin (2016); MAAT Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon (2016); Huis Sonneveld, Rotterdam (2016); K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2016); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro (2015); Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2014); The Museum of Kyoto (2013); Dia Art Foundation, New York (2009) and the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London (2008).

The artist’s work is represented in the collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Dia Art Foundation, New York; Tate Modern, London; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; M+ Museum, Hong Kong and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

Photo: © Fred Ernst courtesy Esther Schipper.