Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster — Nos années 70 (chambre) — Chantal Crousel Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 25, 2023 → January 27, 2024

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster — Galerie Chantal Crousel La galerie Chantal Crousel propose une exposition surprenante et réussie de Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. Tout en émotion et en silence, l'artiste nous plonge dans un monde de souvenirs où l'intimité n'est pas piégée par l'identité et n'a rien du voyeurisme.

Galerie Chantal Crousel is pleased to present Nos années 70 (chambre) (1992) by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster in its second space at 5 rue de Saintonge.

“In my view, the room is a natural dimension of art, the first place where one hangs personal or collective things. It’s a mental space where one composes an ambiance. […] My rooms are like images, but which one can enter. One is physically surrounded by the image, rather like in the cinema. Besides, I have this obsession with a narrative, a narration, even spatial.”—Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster.¹

Nos années 70 (chambre) Our 1970s (bedroom) (1992) is one of the earliest room environments by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, who here summons the memory of her mother’s bedroom. With its purple wall, pink bedspread covering a mattress placed on the ground, patterned fabric from India, and Boalum lamp, this room refers to a certain generation of the 1970s.

Emblematic of Gonzalez-Foerster’s interest in ideas of self-narrative and narration, she has described her rooms as functioning as a kind of detective novel but, as Lynne Cooke points out, the rooms “never gel as ‘image’; they never become legible as concrete representations of a specific space.” The room thus becomes a dynamic interface shaping subjectivity.

Since the 1990s, the artist has created more than sixty room environments. Nos années 70 (chambre) was originally exhibited in her solo exhibitions at Gio Marconi, Milan (1992), at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015-16), and at Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf (2021).

Nos années 70 (chambre) can also be seen as the artist’s reckoning with the conceptual art of the 1970s. The gallery is presenting Nos années 70 (chambre) alongside other works by Gonzalez- Foerster from the nineties.

¹ Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, cited by Jean-Max Colard, Chambres à part, Les Inrockuptibles, N°153, May 27 — June 2, 1998, p.67, in Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. 1887 — 2058 (2015). Under the direction of Emma Lavigne. Exhibition catalog (Centre Pompidou, Paris, September 23, 2015 — February 1, 2016 and Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, April 23, 2015 — August 7, 2016). Edited by Prestel Verlag, Munich/London/New York. p.198.