Ter­ence Gower was born in British Co­lum­bia, Canada. He stud­ied at Emily Carr Col­lege, spent the early years of his prac­tice in Van­cou­ver, Cologne, and Mex­ico City and has con­tin­ued to show widely in­ter­na­tion­ally. He has been based in New York City since 1995 where he has shown at PS1, New Mu­seum, Queens Mu­seum and many com­mer­cial and non-profit gal­leries. In­ter­na­tion­ally he has shown re­cently at In­sti­tut d’Art Con­tem­po­rain Vil­lur­baine, Lyon; MACBA, Barcelona; Ten­sta Kon­sthal, Stock­holm; Museo Tamayo, Mex­ico City; MAC, San­ti­ago, Chile; Na­tional Gallery of Canada, Ot­tawa; Haus der Kul­turen der Welt, Berlin; MUSAC, León, Spain; and Au­dain Gallery, Van­cou­ver.  He has par­tic­i­pated in the Mer­co­sul and Ha­vana Bi­en­ni­als. His work on the mod­ern move­ment in Mex­ico was the sub­ject of a ma­jor

solo ex­hi­bi­tion, Ciu­dad Mod­erna, at the Lab­o­ra­to­rio Arte Alameda in 2005. His 2009 solo ex­hi­bi­tion at the Hir­sh­horn Mu­seum in Wash­ing­ton, DC treated the his­tory of that in­sti­tu­tion. Gower has built four pavil­ions: the Bi­cy­cle Pavil­ion for the Colección Jumex, Mex­ico City; the Pro­jec­tion Pavil­ion for Lab­o­ra­to­rio Arte Alameda, Mex­ico City; the Work­shop Pavil­ion for MUSAC, León, Spain; and Su­per­Puesto for the Bronx Mu­seum, in New York City. A new pub­lic com­mis­sion from the New York School Con­struc­tion Au­thor­ity, was re­cently in­stalled in Queens, New York and a ma­jor new com­mis­sion from the Re­gion Rhône-Alpes will be in­au­gu­rated in Saint-Ge­nis Pouilly, France in spring 2017.

 

There are two mono­graphs on Ter­ence Gower’s work: Ciu­dad Mod­erna: Ter­ence Gower Videos (Turner Press, Mex­ico City, 2006) and Dis­play Ar­chi­tec­ture: Ter­ence Gower Pavil­ions (Navado Press, Berlin, 2008). Gower’s art­work has been fea­tured in the books Be­tween Walls and Win­dows: Ar­chitek­tur und Ide­olo­gie (Hatje Cantz/HKW), The Air is Blue (Trilce), Re­vis­it­ing the Glass House (Yale Uni­ver­sity Press), Heimat Mod­erne (Ga­lerie für Zeit­gennössis­ches Kunst, Leipzig), and Made in Mex­ico (ICA, Boston). Ar­ti­cles and re­views on Gower’s work have ap­peared in the Wash­ing­ton Post, New York Times, Boston Globe, Art­fo­rum, Flash Art, Art Press, Art Nexus, Time Out, The Vil­lage Voice, Pro­ceso, Ar­quine, Cana­dian Ar­chi­tect, Dwell, and oth­ers.

 

He has coau­thored the book Ap­pen­dices, Il­lus­tra­tions and Notes (with Mon­ica de la Torre) for Smart Art Press, Los An­ge­les, and has writ­ten ar­ti­cles for Do­mus Mex­ico, Bomb, Roulotte, On Site, and Mod­ern Painters mag­a­zines. Cab­i­net and the Archives of Amer­i­can Art Jour­nal have both com­mis­sioned artist’s pro­jects from him.

 

His videos have been pro­grammed at SMBA/Stedelijk Mu­seum (Am­s­ter­dam), Au­di­to­rium INA (Paris), Grazer Kun­stverein (Graz, Aus­tria), Museo Na­cional Reina Sofia (Madrid), UCLA Ham­mer Mu­seum (Los An­ge­les), New Mu­seum (New York), Es­pai d’Art Con­tem­po­rani de Castelló (Spain), Fun­dación Tele­fon­ica and Fun­dación Proa (Buenos Aires),

Musée d’Art Con­tem­po­rain de Montréal, and at film fes­ti­vals in Flo­rence, Rot­ter­dam, New York, Chicago, Mel­bourne, Buenos Aires, and Vladi­vos­tok.

 

Gower has been in­vited to cu­rate ex­hi­bi­tions at the Smith­son­ian Amer­i­can Art Mu­seum, Wash­ing­ton, DC (Spans), Museo de Arte Car­rillo Gil, Mex­ico City (Pub­lic Prac­tice / Pri­vate Lives), el Museo del Bar­rio, New York (The Con­cep­tual Trend), el Museo de la Ciu­dad de Mex­ico (Pasaje Itur­bide), Boul­der Mu­seum of Con­tem­po­rary Art (The Coun­ter­feit Sub­ject), and the San Fran­cisco Art In­sti­tute (Ten­den­cies). He cre­ated the ex­hi­bi­tion ar­chi­tec­ture for The Pup­pet Show at ICA Philadel­phia and for El Grito at MUSAC, Léon, Spain.

 

He has given pub­lic lec­tures at uni­ver­si­ties and mu­se­ums in Vi­enna, Malmö, Gothen­burg, Copen­hagen, Riga, Lyon, Van­cou­ver, Mex­ico City, Ha­vana, Buenos Aires, New York, Wash­ing­ton, New Haven, Cam­bridge, Chicago, Los An­ge­les, San Fran­cisco, and other cities in the US.

 

Gower has been awarded a John Si­mon Guggen­heim Memo­r­ial Fel­low­ship, Smith­son­ian Artists Re­search Fel­low­ship, Canada Coun­cil Long Term Grant; NYSCA Ar­chi­tec­ture, Plan­ning & De­sign Pro­ject Award, Gra­ham Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship, Pe­ter S. Reed Foun­da­tion Grant, Pe­ter Nor­ton Fam­ily Foun­da­tion Grant, World Views Stu­dios Res­i­dency (WTC, New York), Cité des Arts Fel­low­ship (Paris), Bogliasco Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship

(Genoa), and a fel­low­ship to the Res­i­den­cia In­ter­na­cional de Artis­tas en Ar­gentina (Buenos Aires).

 

Works by Ter­ence Gower can be found in the fol­low­ing col­lec­tions: Na­tional Gallery of Canada, Museo de Art Con­tem­poráneo de Castilla y León, Hir­sh­horn Mu­seum and Sculp­ture Gar­den, Museu de Arte do Rio, Brazil, Colección Jumex, Pe­ter Nor­ton Col­lec­tion, Colección Juan Yarur, Queens Mu­seum, Mauro Her­l­izka Col­lec­tion, Gävle Mu­nic­i­pal Col­lec­tion, New York City De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion, and the Anne Shel­ton, Ro­drigo Peñafiel, and Car­los Brillem­bourg pri­vate col­lec­tions among oth­ers.

BI­OG­RA­PHY⤓