This website is an online archive of the work of Terence Gower, a visual artist based in New York City. The Projects archive can be searched two ways: By Medium and by Year. A small selection of work from the 1990s is also documented on this site. Each Project page features a short statement, documentation, and links to selected texts and online sources related to the work. Terence Gower is represented by LABOR, Mexico City  and can be contacted at tg@terencegower.com. This website was designed by Nora Cristea.
STATEMENT
I work on a number of bodies of work at once, each developed over several years. In the past decade my work has focused on a critical re-reading of the modern movement and its utopian bent. A desire to reexamine the notion of progress—a term corrupted by the excesses of technological modernism—has fueled my research on the post-war period and has led to a search for models from the past that might still be relevant today.
I have done extensive work about modern architecture in Mexico, the United States and Canada. I am especially interested in the question of how buildings signify beyond their function: How do embassy buildings represent democracy (a question I explore in Baghdad Case Study); how do public housing complexes represent government activism (the subject of the installations Grand Ensemble and Tlatelolcona); or how does the vocabulary of functionalism represent the notion of progress (Polytechnic and Functionalism).
I am interested in how non-representational forms can convey meaning. Abstract forms can communicate abstract ideas more effectively than representational or pictorial forms, and abstract art can be a political medium. My recent work on abstract art (Display Modern [Hepworth], Noguchi Galaxy) compliments my earlier research on architectural form.
I work in many media, including video, sculpture, drawing, photography, and architecture. My recent projects can be thought of as curatorial installations. I am often invited to do readings of collections and archives and the resulting projects combine video, sculpture, and archival material in large museum installations (Public Spirit at the Hirshhorn Museum, Display Nature at Gävle Konstcentrum). This process has also led to invitations from museums to create an architectural context for large group exhibitions with the goal of communicating the curator’s thesis through the form of the exhibition.
BIOGRAPHY