SPLENDIDE HOTEL, 2015
This neon work was developed during Dominique Gonzalez Foerster’s 2014 solo
exhibition Splendide Hotel, at the Palacio de Cristal, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte
Reina Sofia. The artist installed a large (not neon) sign of the title of the exhibition above
the entrance to the Palacio de Cristal. She then created a smaller neon version for her
2015 retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, which was installed adjacent to the
installation work of the same name.
For the exhibition at the Palacio de Cristal, Reina Sofia, Gonzalez-Foerster created
a large, interactive installation throughout the various spaces of the Palacio de Cristal.
The installation comprised Persian carpeting and rocking chairs. Each rocking chair
had a specially bound book tied to it, encouraging visitors to sit down and read. The list
of books included among others, literature, science fiction and philosophy in German,
English, French and Spanish.
Conceptually, the exhibition took the date of construction of the Palacio de Cristal
(1887) as a point of departure. The year is peopled with birthdays, publishing dates and
moments of scientific discovery. Gonzalez-Foerster created a complex, intuitive web of
literary, cultural, musical, and historical associations around books, objects, discoveries
and their authors and readers. The title, “Splendide Hotel” is adapted from a line by
poet Arthur Rimbaud, and conflates this literary reference with the actual opening
of two hotels in Europe named “Splendide Hotel” around this same time-period.
The rich web of associations creates an atmosphere that acts as a link, or like a H.G. Wells
time machine, to the 19th century, specifically to the year 1887, creating a fictional moment
that appears to echo through time as representation of an imaginary place and time.
EXHIBITION HISTORY
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster 1887 – 2058,
K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf (April 23 – August 7, 2016)
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster 1887 – 2058,
Centre Pompidou, Paris (September 23, 2015 – February 1, 2016)
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