UNE CHAMBRE EN VILLE, 1996
Une Chambre En Ville is an early iconic work from the artistʼs series of chambres
(rooms) that with economic simplicity construct environments meant to evoke periods
(developmental, cultural, historical), atmospheres or emotions through color, functional
or ornamental objects and sometimes imagery. The chambres act like conflations of
mnemonic traces, creating spaces full of a vague concreteness, of half-remembered
occurrences and objects, which also characterizes the dynamics of dreams. For the
observer these environments can provoke a personal experience that also includes
the feeling of intruding into someone else‘s private space, even if one that is publicly
displayed and may be in part fictional.
“Hours of light and information, or how a city enters a room. A totally urban room.
Autobiographical: the awareness of a floating environment inhabited by the input
of information in the form of sound, light and texts. These flows act as sensorial
stimulants and reveal absence and isolation as much as information and the
link with the city. Connected to the outside world, the room becomes a kind of
miniature urban landscape by analogy. A techno-sensorial interface which takes
the place of objects and biographical constructions.
This “chambre en ville” (bedroom in a town) evokes no past; it lies just within the
present of reception.”
(Extract: Exhibition Brochure, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster 1887–2058, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2015)
Une Chambre En Ville, 1996
(DGF 119)
Exhibition view, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. 1887–2058, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen,
Dusseldorf, 2016
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