Andreas Fogarasi is interested in the aesthetics and the commercialisation of public spaces, as well as the use of architecture, art and design as a means of legitimization of power. In his work that combines different media such as drawing, text, installation or video, he articulates complex language levels to show how cultural mechanisms and hegemonic willpower work together – whilst also displaying their limits.

In the title choice of this new exhibition, Année Le Nôtre, shown at the Cortex Athletico – Paris gallery, he creates a falsely memorial gesture in honour of the anniversary of the birth of Louis XIV’s gardener, André Le Nôtre, as he had done previously in the 2008 exhibition – that celebrated the world of automobiles, or in 2018 – that let us foresee a close yet distant future full of promises and the most unlikely utopias. As a non-event become cultural merchandise, the anniversary date that he uses plays with the idea of the monumentalisation of the calendar. This type of monumentalisation, produced by the cultural and State heritage industry, becomes with Fogarasi a gesture of detachment, like in the series of collages Architecture (Sights). Starting with tourist maps of the cities of Florence or Beijing – as he has done in the past for Boston, Paris or Düsseldorf – he isolates parts by cutting out spectacular and visionary architecture put forward by these cities as exemplary of their identities, icons of their cultural and inevitably progressive ideology. However, Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren’s China Central Television Headquarters, or the train station of Florence Santa-Maria-Novella, a modernist incision in a historical city, imagined by Giovanni Michelucci, henceforth appear quite insignificant when they are shrunken by the effect of isolation and movement from the map to the white paper. Graphic signs devoid of content, shapes without amplitude, these new, postmodern movements (those of Norman Foster, Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid or Renzo Piano) go against the idea of cultural, social and topographical celebration. As icons of today brought together in the Stars artworks, they put the surface to play: that of the current relationship between space and social structure, between life and its environment.

Andreas Fogarasi (Vienna, 1977) was rewarded in 2007 with the Lion d’Or at the 52^nd Venice Biennial, for his project Kultur und Freizeit presented in the Hungarian pavilion. 

Born in Austria in 1977, Andreas Fogarasi lives and works in Vienna. After studying architecture, he went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna followed by a residency at the Pavillon – Palais de Tokyo during 2002-2003. He participated at Manifesta in Frankfurt in 2002, then went on to win the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale in 2007 for the best National Representation with his project « Kultur und Freizeit » in th Hungarian Pavillon.
Recent solo exhibitions at institutions include the  Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid ; Grazer Kunstverein, Graz ; Ernst Muezeum, Budapest, MAK, Vienna ; Ludwig Forum, Aachen ; Prefix ICA, Toronto. In 2014 he will have solo exhibitions at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, Galerie fur zeitgenossische Kunst, Leipzig, Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo and MAK Center, Los Angeles.

Année Le Nôtre is Andreas Fogarasi's first solo show in Paris.

Photographs index

1 - Yokohama Pier Port Terminal, Yokohama - (Foreign Office Architects, 2002)

3 - State Fair of Texas, Dallas, 2013

4 - Étoile (Nation), 2013

Portico of France, former Hall of Varied Industries, Texas State Fair, Dallas - (Georg Dahl, 1936)

Central Plaza of Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, Tokyo - (Kohn Pedersen Fox, The Jerde Partnership, 2003)

Hungarian Pavilion, Expo, Seville - (Imre Makovecz, 1992)

Walhalla memorial, near Regensburg - (Leo von Kienze, 1842)

Prime Tower office high-rise and Cubus Office Building, Zürich - (Gigon Guyer Architekten, 2011)

5 - Occupy tents at HSBC Headqarters, Hong Kong - (Norman Foster, 1985)

7 - Étoile (America), 2013

Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, Dallas (Joshua Prince-Ramus, Rem Koolhaas, 2009)

Model of Ballroom Marfa Drive-In, Marfa, Texas - (MOS Architects, 2011-)

Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles - (Frank Gehry, 2003)

Temporary Construction on the grounds of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art - 2013

Motor City Casino, Detroit -(2008)

9 - Firenze Sights (Architecture), 2013

Stadio Comunale, Pier Luigi Nervi, 1930-32?Stazione S.M. Novella, Gruppo Toscano (Giovanni Michelucci, Italo Gamberini e.a.), 1933-36

10 - Beijing Sights (Architecture), 2013,

National Stadium, Herzog & de Meuron + Ai Weiwei, 2007

National Aquatics Center, PTW Architects, 2007

National Grand Theatre, Paul Andreu, 2007

CCTV Headquarters, OMA, 2008

West Railway Station, Beijing Institute of Architectural Design, 1996