Lafontaine Marie-Jo

1950

Marie-Jo Lafontaine was born in Antwerp in 1950. After starting her studies in law, she studied at La Cambre - Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture et d'Arts Visuels of Architecture and Visual Arts in Brussels, where she currently lives.
Her work is first made up of textile sculptures, then in the early 80's, video installations or more precisely video-sculptures of which she is one of the pioneers. However, her work also crosses the
Marie-Jo Lafontaine is thus an explorer of the images, of all the images, Marie-Jo Lafontaine is therefore an explorer of images, of all images (photographs, videos, installations), so much so that she renews the formal as well as the political part of the visual arts by integrating, always, the upheaval of the emotions.
Since then, Marie-Jo Lafontaine has exhibited her work in prestigious museums and galleries around the world, and has received international awards and prizes for a body of work that has developed over three decades.
In 1977, she was awarded the Prix de la Jeune Peinture Belge for her monochrome textile works, and in the same year, she won the Wilhem Loth Prize of the Mathildenhöhe Museum in Darmstadt. In 1992 she received the Media Award of the European Union for her video installations, and in 1998 the European Photography Award in Great Britain.
Marie-Jo Lafontaine also received a scholarship from MIT in Boston in 1985, and in 2008 she was elected "European Artist of the Year" in China.
Her works explore the art of the portrait or the representation of the body, the urban space or the relationship between the image and the text by developing, for that, a dramatic power and an unprecedented sense of color ... And Marie-Jo Lafontaine has exhibited them at the Museum of Modern Art, Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris in 1981; at the Tate Gallery in London in 1985 and, in 1987 at the Documenta in Kassel, where an important video installation, Les Larmes d'Acier, was
presented. In 1999, a retrospective was devoted to his work at the Musée du Jeu de Paume in Paris, then, ten years later in 2008-2009, at the Botanique in Brussels, and many others ...
From the point of view of artistic commissions, let's mention for example in 2002, the Lost Paradise project at the Glass Pavilion BMW in Munich, Germany, and, in 2006, the I Love The World project which was elected by the city of Frankfurt and a group of banks for the official opening of the FIFA Football World Cup which took place the same year in Germany. This work in the public space was intended to be projected on ten thousand square meters of screens spread over ten buildings representing the "skyline" of Frankfurt. In 2002, Marie-Jo Lafontaine was the winner of the competition project for the new "Pier F" at Stockhlom Airport, and in 2012 of the "Icons of Art Basel - Rolls-Royce Artist Talks" program.
Marie Jo Lafontaine's work is of great plastic, aesthetic and dramaturgical intensity, realized with consistency and rigor over the
years.
Alexandre Castant Essayist & Art Critic

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