Belle comme le jour by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera
March 8 to March 13, 2016
As part of Further Than I Can Throw A Stone, Plug In ICA is pleased to present Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera’s Belle comme le jour.
The Paris-based and illustrious Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is best known for her films and her immersive installations that reference literature, cinema, and architecture. She transforms both spaces and herself, often taking on the role of a character within her works to create psychologically taut and affective landscapes. Tristan Bera is a French artist and curator whose multi-disciplinary practice refers and borrows from cinema and literature. Since 2010, Gonzalez-Foerster and Bera have collaborated on various exhibitions, films, magazines and installations.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster often begins her process in consideration of other people’s work, modifying someone else’s art. For Belle comme le jourshe, along with her collaborator Tristan Bera use Luis Bunuel’s 1967 film Belle de Jour as one of their points of departure, but they imagine a time before the original storyline of the film began, when the main character Séverine is still single. They create a scenario that may have had impact on her character’s actions in the actual film but they twist this into a line that pierces fiction into reality by absorbing the actor who originally played her into their narrative. Catherine Deneuve and Séverine are not separated in Gonzalez-Foerster and Bera’s prelude but are embroiled as the artists find a doppelganger to Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni, who became the actor’s lover and the father of her daughter Chiara shortly after the production of Bunuel’s original film.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is a French cross-disciplinary artist based in Paris and Rio de Janeiro. Gonzalez-Foerster embeds elements from film, science fiction, art history and fashion to create her psychologically complex mise-en-scène-like installations. Her recent mid-career survey Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster 1887-2058 was presented at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. She has exhibited internationally at venues including Kunsthalle Zürich; Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2007); Tate Modern, London; Dia Art Foundation, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York. Her work has also been included in Documenta, Kassel, Germany; the São Paulo Biennial; Skulptur Projekte Münster, Germany (2007); the Venice Biennale; and Performa, New York.
Tristan Bera is a Paris-based art historian, curator and artist whose decadent installations illustrate his long-standing interest in Balzac and Huysmans. He has worked on major exhibitions such as Dada, Centre Pompidou, Paris; andGainsbourg, Cité de la Musique, Paris.
Belle comme le jour by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Berais one of ten art videos and short films presented as part of Further Than I Can Throw A Stone. Over the duration of the exhibition, a selection of works by a diverse and international group of artist is presented sequentially as stand alone artworks, each projected for one week at a time. They are joined through medium and an interplay of performance and biography.
On Tuesday, March 15th, Plug In ICA will launch The Karrabing Film Collective’s Windjarrameru (The Stealing C*nt$).
Cécile B. Evans, Trilogy (January 22 – 31) • Kelly Mark, 108 Leyton Ave (February 1 – 7) • Lisa Jackson, SAVAGE (February 8 – 14) • Erika Vogt, Darker Imposter (February 15 – 21) • Erica Eyres, Autobiography I and II (February 22 – 28) • John Bock, Bauchhöhle bauchen (February 29 – March 6) • Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Tristan Bera, Belle comme le jour (March 7 – 13) • Karrabing Film Collective, Windjarrameru, the Stealing C*nt$ (March 14 – 20) • John Knight, MacGuffin 8 -2975 (March 21 – 27) • Jeremy Blake, Winchester (March 28 to April 3).
Plug In ICA gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, and we extend gratitude to The Winnipeg Foundation and all our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers.
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For media inquiries please contact: Janique Vigier at janique@plugin.org or by phone at (204) 942-1043 ext. 27