Kim Schoen: Fontane Gurgulear



Le Fontane Gurgulear—Vos debe vider isto! 

In qualunque lingua, un del parolas le plus belle certo es Gurgulear. Fontane Gargarisar, Fontane 
Stuffa-Boca, Fontane Guttear, et Fontane Rost-Grasse es proxima, ma Fontane Gurgulear es le plus 
physicamente e opulente.

Del abundantia del corde le bucca parla. 
E in le cavo de nostre corpore, sonos nascer.  
Nostre buci gutta, le valvula gutta.

E le estate es le tempore quando aqua sonos 
le plus belle.

Si il vos place, reveni. 
Retorna a Fontane Gurgulear! *



You are cordially invited to Fontane Gurgulear, an installation by Kim Schoen, opening at LAMOA August 14th 
from 3—6 p.m. Schoen works with the rhetorics of display across various mediums. Her interest in fountains dates back to a residency at Fabrikken in Copenhagen, where she experienced Tivoli Gardens in the dead of winter. The video she made there, The Second Oldest Amusement, was shown alongside another video, Have You Never Let Someone Else Be Strong (shot un-permitted at the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas) at her 2015-2016 solo show at MMoCA. Wet Technologyy, a suite of performative photographs made in 2015, features ornamental fountain nozzles put to new use. Fontane Gurgulear (The Drooling Fountain) now continues her line of inquiry into the pathetic aspects of the often spectacular or propagandistic uses of fountains as emblems of power, prestige and accretions of wealth. Schoen’s work re-inserts the idea of the human body back into the mechanics of display that we are routinely confronted with.

The brochure’s text that advertises Fontane Gurgulear (featured above) is written in Occidental Language. Occidental is an invented language, devised in the 1920s by Edgar de Wahl based on various Western (Occidental) languages. In addition to the brochure, a series of posters advertising the fountain are located around the Occidental College Campus, featuring empty fountains and their exposed piping, reflected in the installation at LAMOA.


Kim Schoen holds an MFA from CalArts (2005) and a Masters in Philosophy from the Royal College of Art in London (2008). Recent exhibitions of her work include Komma, (Kunstverein Springhornhof, Germany) Have You Never Let Someone Else Be Strong, (MMoCA), duh? Art & Stupidity (Focal Point Gallery, UK), Imitation Game (Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, UAE), Remembering Forward: (LAXART, L.A.), Objective Considerations of Contemporary Phenomena (MOTInternational Projects, London), and Stupidious (South London Gallery, London). Schoen’s work has been written about in the Los Angeles Times, Art in America, and her essays on repetition and photography (“The Serial Attitude Redux”, “The Expansion of the Instant”) have been published in X-TRA Quarterly for Contemporary Art. Kim is also the co-founder and editor of MATERIAL Press.

  

* (Translation from Occidental Language to English Language)

The Drooling Fountain—you’ve got to come to see this!
One of the most beautiful words in any language would be drooling. 
The Gargling Fountain, The Gagging Fountain, The Dribbling Fountain, and The Dripping Fountain come close, but The Drooling Fountain is the most physical and opulent. Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. In the recesses of our body, sounds spring forth. 
Our mouths are running; the taps are running. 
Summer is the season when water sounds most beautiful. 
So please, return. Return to The Drooling Fountain!