09/10/2021 - 27/11/2021
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
Astrocytes

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster Astrocytes

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Astrocytes, installation view at Jan Mot, 2021

 

Making an inner vision visible

The below text is a fragment of a conversation we had with Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster in summer as she was preparing her current exhibition at the gallery Astrocytes (extended until 27/11).

PARIS, AUG 20. – I came across the word “astrocyte” researching about Covid-19 last year in February 2020. Astrocytes are less famous than neurones in our understanding of how the brain works but their importance has been constantly re-evaluated in the past years. I love the cosmic and stellar reference and even before mentioning Endodrome, I want to mention the Cosmodrome (2000), a XXL light and sound environment which is imagined like a trip in outer space. Endodrome being more like a trip into inner space, a voyage inside, a VR experience staged like a seance.

A few years ago, I had a vision of a constellation of rings occupying the gallery space in an unusual way, which means making it impossible to walk through the space and look at the exhibition as usual. I imagined the circulation space, the central void becoming the most important aspect, somehow reversing attention to another dimension.

The multiple rings are engraved with multiple words and connected through multiple strings form a thoughtspace (maybe more like a thoughtform?) but it’s not a room. This project is part of an ensemble called « visions » which includes the Volcanic excursion at the secession and la chambre humaine et la planète close which will be on view in Paris (Galerie Chantal Crousel, 03/09 – 09/10/2021). Astrocytes has connections with the bibliothèque des cubes en bois (2021), in the way it invents a system to display thoughts and connections. 

The words which are part of Astrocytes and engraved on the rings, they are extracted from a kind of « virus diary » which is a series of notes/quotes collected almost every day about our pandemic/syndemic time.

 

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster