Thierry Geoffroy (born 1961), also known as Colonel, is a Danish-French artist. Living in Copenhagen, Denmark. Conceptual artist specialized in format art.
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Thierry Geoffroy has worked with format art since 1989 when he wrote a manifest on 5 types of moving exhibitions(Manifeste – Les differents Types de moving Exhibitions). Since then he has worked on several other formats, his most famous being Emergency Room, which has toured internationally and has been shown at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York.
The format art of Thierry Geoffroy is created to be actualized in multiple locations, every time adding new knowledge to the format. The method is inspired by the TV program format: Art institutions wanting to use an art format must purchase a license and agree to use the original title, the architectural concept and the methods. As in TV vast documentation is always created with video and photo material as central elements.
Thierry Geoffroy's formats always involve many participants - often several hundreds - and is occupied with social psychology: conflicts, collaboration, etc.
Besides a long and norm-challenging, often humouristic, unusual and immense art production Thierry Geoffroy has also made several productions for Danish national television DR2. Among these the programs "Capitain" (1999), ”Immigranten” (2001), “Photographe“ (2002) and "Protest Underwear" (2005). The choice of media is frequently changing and is usually concerned with the contemporary. News papers, radio, fashion industry, telephones, internet domains, parties, music festivals, performance, myspace and facebook are among the elements of the artists crossmedia praxis.
Central to the philosophy of Thierry Geoffroy seems to be the concern that contemporary artists have an obligation to confront current thematics – “emergencies”. This is especially evident in Emergency Room and the Awareness Muscle format which goal is to train the collective “muscle of awareness”.
Parallel to the artists conceptual work with format art he has also worked with subjects such as immigration, multiculturalism, colonialism, tourism, hypocrisy and the role of the artist.
In 2010 Geoffroy was an artist of Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain.