Published by Dia Art Foundation. Text by Lynne Cooke, Enrique Vila-Matas.
Chronotopes & Dioramas explores key themes developed in Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's site-specific 2009–2010 installation at Dia at the Hispanic Society of America. For this project, Gonzalez-Foerster took as her point of departure the Society's renowned research library, expanding and updating the historic collection with twentieth-century literature by nearly 40 different authors. The artist installed these books in a trio of dioramas, organizing them by place of origin in one of three regions: the desert, the tropics and the North Atlantic. This companion volume to the installation includes new writing by Gonzalez-Foerster's past collaborator, the celbrated Spanish novelist Enrique Vila-Matas. The book is printed in three different covers, reproducing each of the three diaromas.
The challenging French conceptualist Gonzalez-Foerster is prominent on the international scene. For Skulptur Projekte Münster 2007, she showed small-scale replicas of other Münster fair works, past and present; for her recent ARC Paris museum show, she collaborated with designer Nicolas Ghesquière. Here she speaks with fellow relational aesthetician, Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (b. 1965) made a name for herself in the 1990s with melancholy installations she called "chambers," transforming galleries to reflect inner mental states. She's since moved on to larger public spaces, making over Paris's "Bonne Nouvelle" metro station as a cinematic dreamworld. Tropicalisation! documents 10 large-scale interventions at Antwerp's Museum de Singel.
Hans Ulrich Obrist & Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: The Conversation Series
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: Tropicalisation!