303 Gallery is pleased to present "euqinimod & costumes", our first exhibition of the work of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster.
For her first exhibition at 303 and in a New York gallery, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster will present a new typology of works by revealing an unusual part of her personal archives from the mid-sixties till now, both intimate and social, both fetishistic and symptomatic: her personal clothing and textiles.
While walking through the exhibition "Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s" at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Gonzalez-Foerster had an epiphany that the inflatable Michiko Koshino coat with a movable tail she used to wear belonged to the museum collection and that the exhibited Michiko Koshino coat actually belonged to her wardrobe. Through this revelation a conversation followed, not about fashion, trends, brands, lifestyles, but on clothes and textiles in a larger sense as possible autobiographical evidences and as the symptoms of Gonzalez-Foerster's artistic personality through different periods. Corresponding to different aspects of her practice and to an exhibition itself as far as textiles and clothing could be considered as ready-mades and narratives, Dominique's wardrobe constitutes a new field of exploration into the biographical self.
Gonzalez-Foerster's work has a history of a strong and vivid relation to textiles and clothing considered not only as materials and surfaces but also as objects of meditation and reverie. Textiles have been present in different forms, like carpets combined with books in her various "tapis de lecture", and in different forms as well, such as in "Nos années 70" under the form of an Indian fabric bringing back her mother's room in the seventies, or in "RWF", staging Rainer Werner Fassbinder's room with a brown velvet spread covering the filmmaker's bed. In 2012, Gonzalez-Foerster began work on the the ongoing opera project "M.2062", connecting her research with 19th century issues and the Gesamtskunstwerk, appearing in costume as characters including King Ludwig II, Scarlett O'Hara and Edgar Allan Poe. Clothes evolve from being canvases for moods, attitudes and psychological moments similar to rooms, spaces and dioramas; they turn into apparitions as characters become costumes. By twisted extension, this logic is taken to a new conclusion: Gonzalez-Foerster's clothes appear as costumes, narratives and fictions which mirror a fragmented and multiple inner self.
A subjective description of a selection of works from this exhibition will be featured in the upcoming booklet "euqinimod and costumes" composed by Tristan Bera.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster lives and works in Paris and Rio de Janeiro. In 2015, her career will be the subject of a major survey exhibition at Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro and Centre Pompidou, Paris. In May of this year, 1984-1999 The Decade will open at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France, where Gonzalez-Foerster has designed all scenography and the exhibition scape. Recent solo exhibitions of her work include Splendid Hotel, Palacio de Cristal in collaboration with the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid; M.2062, Stedelijik Museum, Amsterdam; Belle Comme le jour, Art Unlimited, Basel; T.1912, Guggenheim Museum, New York; chronotopes & dioramas, Dia Art Foundation, New York; TH.2058, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London; Nocturama, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon; Expodrome, Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC; Multiverse, Kunsthalle Zürich; and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster – Prix Marcel Duchamp, Centre Pompidou, Paris. She also participated in Making Worlds, the 53rd Venice Biennale; Skulptur Projekte Münster; and Documenta 11, Kassel (2002). Gonzalez-Foerster is the recipient of the 2002 Marcel Duchamp Award.