Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: VOLCANIC EXCURSION (A VISION) — A Transformative Exhibition at Secession

This exhibition features Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's expansive environment, 'VOLCANIC EXCURSION (A VISION)', inspired by Diego Rivera's mural 'Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central'. It presents a fictional, transfeminist, and anti-racist gathering, reflecting on societal shifts and offering a vision of strength and optimism.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's exhibition 'VOLCANIC EXCURSION (A VISION)' at the Secession presents an immersive environment that expands upon her experimental artistic process. Drawing inspiration from literary references, film, and art history, Gonzalez-Foerster crafts spaces that evoke particular moods and engage with the exhibition venue's unique qualities. For this exhibition, she created a monumental mural of 24 meters length and 5 meters height, assembling a diverse cast of figures from past and present, friends and collaborators, in a fictional transfeminist and anti-racist group meeting. This vision of strength and optimism emerged from experiences during the pandemic, particularly from protests and demonstrations. The work draws heavily on Diego Rivera's 1946-47 mural 'Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central', reinterpreting its historical and social commentary through a contemporary lens. While Rivera's mural critiqued bourgeois decadence before the Mexican Revolution, Gonzalez-Foerster's version populates the scene with "inspiring friends, non-binary, trans, queer, fluid, hybrid, lesbian, gay, pan, human and non-human, from present and past." The transition from Rivera's composition to Gustav Klimt's Beethovenfries was also a key step for the artist, incorporating figures like Typhoeus and the three Gorgons. The final mural features 235 life-size representations of people, animals, and fantastical beings, with only three figures from Rivera's original remaining: Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera himself as a boy, and the literary character La Revoltosa. The exhibition thus becomes a vibrant, maximalist scene, a futuristic-utopian protest-jungle party inviting visitors to engage with and expand upon this vision.

Ticketing information is available via an external link, suggesting that admission requires a ticket purchase, though specific details are not provided on this page. The Secession's general information page should be consulted for full details regarding admission and booking procedures.