After, 2009 (left)

Neon, wallpaper

This work was part of the performances K.62 and K.85 by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Ari Benjamin Meyers, staged at the Abrons Art Center in New York, at the Hebbel am Ufer Theater in Berlin and at Kaaitheater, Brussels. It plays on the idea of an “after party.” It also references the Martin Scorsese film After Hours (1985). The performance staged by Gonzalez-Foerster and Benjamin Meyers also took the events of this film as a reference point, leading the viewers on a surreal obstacle course through Soho, before gathering the group under Gonzalez-Foerster’s neon sign.

Untitled, 1986/2015 (right)
Column and surface with carpet

The work is from a series included in the artist’s 2015 exhibition at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro for which Dominique Gonzalez Foerster recreated works from her early years. On the one hand, the combination of ready-made objects is indebted to the artistic discourse from the time of its first execution when items from daily life were introduced into an art context to question the nature of an artwork. On the other hand, the work evokes formal issues associated with modernist and post-modernist discussions.

Photo © Andrea Rossetti