Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

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."

She lives and works in Paris and Rio de Janeiro.

Biography Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster was born in Strasbourg, France in 1965. 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". 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. She has also collaborated with Nicolas Ghesquière on designing displays for Balenciaga boutiques in New York and Paris. 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.

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. González-Foerster has had solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, the Dia Art Foundation, 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.

She participated in the 2006 São Paulo Art Biennial, and the 2009 Venice Biennale.

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 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,". the Dia Art Foundation, the Guggenheim, the Louis Vuitton Foundation, the M+ Museum, the Moderna Museet, and the Tate Modern.

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.