In the first commission for an intervention in the iconic central space of the new MAAT building, the renowned French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster has been invited to create a site-specific work around the theme of the inaugural museum’s program: Utopia/Dystopia. Evoking a 21st century fairy tale, the artist has created Pynchon Park, an enclosure where aliens would be able to observe human behavior in optimal conditions. The new installation takes up the entire thousand square-meters of MAAT’s Oval Gallery, allowing the visitor to become a part of the work of art in a fun and intriguing way.
Inspired by large-scale environments such as TH.2058 at Tate Modern, in London (2008), and Ballard Garden at deSingel, in Antwerp (2014), Pynchon Park opens in Lisbon as a piece in which Gonzalez-Foerster combines several artistic media — sculpture, sound, light, performance — with classic literary references and dystopian concepts taken from the universe of sci-fi.