Introduction

The Museu de Arte Moderna’s Temporama, presented 12 works by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. The exhibition, curated by Pablo Léon de la Barra, covered 1,800 square meters on the second floor of MAM and included iconic works the artist produced between 1985 and 1991, reconstructed for the first time for this exhibition. The show also included a single work produced this year, “an abstract swimming pool,” which featured photographs of the artist appearing as Marilyn Monroe.

The curator, Pablo León de la Barra, explains that “Gonzalez-Foerster has had a strong relationship with Brazil and Rio de Janeiro since 1998 ... She lives part of the time in Rio, and this has a strong influence on her work.” The artist herself adds that she was involved in “a lot of presentations with the Capacete group in Rio de Janeiro” and did four short films in Brazil: Plages, inspired by Burle Marx’s great design for the Copacabana beachfront; Marquise, in Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo, Gloria in Praça Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and Brasília at Parque da Cidade, which is part of the Moderna Museet collection in Stockholm. “In my work,” she explains, “I use a lot of references from Lina Bo Bardi, Burle Marx, Sérgio Bernardes, and others.”

Temporama was conceived specifically for MAM and the “tropical modernism” of Alfonso Reidy (1909–1964), the architect who designed the museum in harmony with the surrounding landscape of Flamengo Park. The exhibition broadens the notion of the traditional retrospective to a longer time frame, probing into the future and receding back in time.

As Gonzalez-Foerster explains, the exhibition “takes shape like a time machine, a park, a beach, a view, and a panorama. A place where we can stop time and experience different space-times.”

Red and turquoise filters placed along the length of the exhibition took visitors back to Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s first works from the 1980s and also to the MAM of the twentieth century.

“The glass façades allow the landscape into the museum. Inside and outside mingle in the exhibition space, which becomes a continuation of the landscape. The glass also sets up a play of reflections and mirages, where different images of Rio overlap with the visitors’ memories and desires. Indeed, any art exhibited at MAM is not just presented inside the museum, but also drifts into the landscape, becoming part of it,” comments curator Pablo Léon de la Barra.