Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, TH.2066, 2008–16, metal bunk beds, science-fiction books, sound, mixed-media reproductions of sculptures (by Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenburg, Katharina Fritsch, Joel Shapiro, and Johannes Brus), LED screen, PVC. Installation view, K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 2016. Photo: Achim Kukulies. © ADAGP, Paris/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf) This nonlinear “retrospective-prospective” of Gonzalez-Foerster’s work offered a script for restaging collective memory. With a selection of previously exhibited environments, or “perfect metaphors for nature,” the artist resuscitated a sequence of historical persons and events. Together, these disjointed spaces—Brasilia Hall, 1998/2000; Splendide Hotel, 2014—displaced eras and bodies, achieving an almost psychoactive effect. Some works implied events yet to occur, such as TH.2066, 2008–16, which reimagined the museum as a nuclear shelter filled with bunk beds, science-fiction books, and enlarged replicas of iconic artworks from institutes in Düsseldorf. These were illuminated by flashes from The Last Film, 2008, a continuous loop in which cinematic dystopias melt into one flickering light.
