If the aim of art is to turn heads, involve the spectator, entertain, provoke and challenge perceptions, then Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is going the right way.
Remember her bunk beds at the Tate, offering shelter amid the threat of nuclear disaster and with a Louise Bourgeois spider looming over all? (The installation was part of the Unilever Series in the Turbine Hall in 2009.)
Or her Bob Dylan images, recalling his “Subterranean Homesick Blues” era, carrying cryptic banners such as the single word “Because”?
The Centre Pompidou looks both back and forward with the French artist, presenting some 30 connected works in spaces both inside and outside of the museum.
Along the way there are many specially-created areas full of sounds and visions, covering the years 1887 to 2058.
The visons are variously biographical or dystopian.
Born in Strasbourg in 1965, Gonzalez-Foerster presents rooms, personal and more public, with fragmented pieces of film, books and music along the way that touch on fashion and history.
The display builds on her solo shows at the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2007, and the Palacio de Cristal of Madrid in 2014.
A helpful timeline references some of the key events she follows, starting with the 1887 construction of the Splendide Hotel Constructed of iron and glass, the Spanish capital’s own Crystal Palace was built by Ricardo Velázquez Bosco, just as Arthur Rimbaud found himself in Aden. Visitors can sit in rocking chairs and read books provided about the history and spot the connections.
Gonzalez-Foerster moves on to reference the inauguration of Brasilia - the artist lives in Rio de Janeiro and Paris. She also picks up on the Marcel Duchamp exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. She won Le Prix Marcel Duchamp for her career’s work in 2002.
The sensual M.2062 is an “opera in the making” developed at different sites since 2012. More work is based on footage of the artist’s own appearance as Lola Montez at Berlin’s Cabuwazi Circus.
“Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster 1887 - 2058“ runs through February 1, 2016, at the Pompidou Center (Centre Pompidou) in Paris.
