EXOTOURISME, 2002/2013
The neon sign Exotourisme refers to the same-titled film and video installation produced
by the artist on the occasion of the Prix Marcel Duchamp Award and developed for the
Centre Pompidou in 2002–2003.
The neon sign is installed atop a rectangular area of purple wall paint. A second version of the
work exists, in which the neon sign is installed atop a rectangular area of orange wall paint.
The project Exotourisme addresses complex transient experiences such as an
ambience of a city space, an exotic travel or a momentous passing vision of a dream.
Although it can be read as a critique of the practice of touristic exploration, exoticism
and restless search for the new impressions, it is still also an invitation to dream up,
visualise and contemplate distant unknown landscapes. The neon sign mediates the
viewer’s longing to immerse in a new experience of a journey.
The film Exotourisme featured a vision of an enigmatic intergalactic space journey that
combined aesthetics of a science-fiction film of the 1960’s with visual and acoustic
intensities of colour and sound. Cosmic landscape pictured in the film alluded to
a dream, a fantasy about distant and unreachable territories, and still unknown
landscapes of the outer space.
An expanded installation of the Exotourisme film will be shown at the second part of
Gonzalez-Foerster’s retrospective, at the K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in
Dusseldorf, opening April 23 (through August 7, 2016).
Exotourisme, 2002/2013
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster.
1887–2058, Centre Pompidou, 2015
40