Claire Fontaine is an art collective based in Paris, making, among other things, large-scale words and phrases out of fluorescent light tubes. The font used is called “K”, a typeface in turn taking its name from the Czech author Franz Kafka, as a tribute to him and to his unfinished work Amerika.
From the artists’ website, in translation:
Claire Fontaine is a Paris-based collective artist, founded in 2004. After lifting her name from a popular brand of school notebooks, Claire Fontaine declared herself a “readymade artist” and began to elaborate a version of neo-conceptual art that often looks like other people’s work. Working in neon, video, sculpture, painting and text, her practice can be described as an ongoing interrogation of the political impotence and the crisis of singularity that seem to define contemporary art today.
Selected artwork is shown below.
Claire Fontaine, Amerika (k. font / Mexican), 2009 mexican double ballast lamps and fittings, 96, 72 and 48 inches, cables and transformers Installation view, Regina Gallery, Moscow (photo courtesy of: http://www.metropicturesgallery.com)
Claire Fontaine, Arbeit Macht Kapital (K font), 2004, Galerie Neu, Berlin, Germany — May 2014
“Arbeit Macht Kapital” in progress
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC) in Léon, Spain — 25 June – 18 September, 2011
Please Come Back (K. Font/Mexican Version), 2010. Courtesy Museo Tamayo and INBA-Conaculta, Mexico.
Installation view of The Possibility of an Island at MOCA at Goldman Warehouse, 2008. © Steven Brooke
Claire Fontaine Collective at Manif d’art Québec [FRIMAS]
Claire Fontaine, Strike, (K. font V.I), 2007. Tubes fluorescent, red gelatine filters, wall-mounted steel frame, movement detector and circuit-breaker. 650 x 170 x 40 cm.
Courtesy des artistes et Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris. Photo: Claire Fontaine.
Quebec City, Canada — May 3 to June 1, 2014
