LUCIE FONTAINE

The following images are shots of the Estate of Lucie Fontaine. For two months from August 15 to October 15, 2012, three human beings united – beside other things – in the name of Lucie Fontaine have inhabited a three-story townhouse in New York on 64th Street between Lexington and Park avenues, which happen to be also Marianne Boesky Gallery’s Upper East Side space. Following Marianne Boesky’s difficult-to-refuse invitation, these three human beings created an environment, which was supposed to raise specific issues. In fact the first goal of this experiment responded to the following question: can we create a space that amplifies the ever more invisible division between private and public, between leisure and labor, through a space that is a commercial gallery and a home at the same time? The second concern was time and speed: can we activate a space so that in one month – from September 15 to October 15 – it will contain the same amount of experience of a much longer period? Can we create parallel timelines? All these issues – our privacy becoming more and more fictional and our time getting faster and faster – are universal. At the same time New York confirmed its role of privileged stage for this reality that is flexible, porous, difficult to grasp and therefore definitely problematic but also undeniably exciting. New York is a stage – literally – where everyone is playing a role, everyone with no exception is performing to the extent that again the difference between actor and audience is impossible to define. For all these reasons the Estate of Lucie Fontaine could happen only in New York, only in that house and only with those three human beings – “survivors” that’s how they called themselves. No doubt it was a live experience and the following images are just showing a glimpse of it. As a matter of fact the following shots are empty, there is no people animating the scene. This decision follows the desire of including everyone who lived, stayed and visited the space. There is no difference between the passerby and the people who lived there, between the gallery staff and the people who animated all those wonderful nights: they all made this project possible.

Lucie Fontaine : Estate, 2012.

View of the project at

Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York

Furniture selected by Jon Howell

Courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery,

New York

Photo credit: Genevieve Hanson, NYC