Claire Fontaine

14 أيار / مايو 2008
8 Jun 2008

Taking her name from a brand of French notebooks, Claire Fontaine is an intellectual space whose core is empty since the most important part of her identity is cooperation. Instead, the collaborators who form Claire Fontaine consider themselves to be her assistants. Claire Fontaine was born out of a refusal to accept the division between intellectual and manual work.

Enlarge

Claire Fontaine, The educated consumer, 2007, and You Pay, 2007 -

Claire Fontaine chose the art world as the best place to avoid this type of hierarchy, declared herself a “readymade artist”, and began to elaborate a version of neo-conceptual art. She makes artworks that often resemble those of other artists, working in neon, video, sculpture, painting and text. However, she refuses the qualification of “appropriationist”, preferring the one of “expropriationist” that insists on the use value of the borrowed references, and on the political meaning of theft.

At Witte de With, Claire Fontaine’s works will be presented within the remains of Liam Gillick’s retrospective exhibition Three perspectives and a short scenario. Gillick created a meta-structure throughout the galleries of Witte de With. Within this framework, he designated certain spaces as “institutional zones”, which he offered back to Witte de With’s curatorial team. This gesture was a manifestation of his refusal to take sole responsibility for the entire exhibition space and highlighted instead the division of responsibility between artist and institution in the creation of any exhibition.