Thomas Hirschhorn
dal 1/3/2005 al 3/7/2005
Segnalato da
1/3/2005
Thomas Hirschhorn
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
The artist will show works that have been completed during the last three years. The focus of the exhibition will be the 200 sq m installation Doppelgarage (Double Garage; 2002). In addition, the works North Pole, South Pole and Not in My Name (2004) as well as Les Quatre Livres (2005). The sculptures are reminiscent of tombs or sacrificial altars and create connections to ideological value systems that are represented by individual involvement.
Doppelgarage
North Pole, South Pole, Not in My Name
Les Quatre Livres
The first exhibition in Munich by the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn will show works that have been completed during the last three years. The focus of the exhibition will be the 200 sq m installation Doppelgarage (Double Garage; 2002) that was acquired for the collection of the Pinakothek der Moderne. In addition, the works North Pole, South Pole and Not in My Name (2004) as well as Les Quatre Livres (2005) will be exhibited for the first time.
»Art is a tool used to get to know the world. Art is a tool used to confront myself with reality. Art is a tool used to experience the time in which I am living«, says Thomas Hirschhorn (born in Bern 1957; living in Paris since 1984). Having become known in the 1990's through his "street altars" for, among others, Ingeborg Bachmann and Otto Freundlich, Hirschhorn ranks today, along with Mike Kelley and Francis Alÿs, as one of the most creative and influential international sculptors of his generation.
In Doppelgarage (2002), which consists of two walk-in units, the artist negotiates between the fundamental categories of human feeling and action: violence and counterviolence, despair and revenge, guilt and humaneness. For this examination, the artist has chosen a location whose almost secreted seclusion forms the base for free thoughts where, simultaneously, active work is also possible - a mixture of garage, workshop and hobby room. The Doppelgarage is both a space for practical life as well as a space for the development of ideas.
The actual point of departure for Hirschhorn's installation is September 11, 2001. The events of that day are a part of a complex story with numerous, partly overlapping strands of plot, the consequences of which are today still not foreseeable. The Doppelgarage offers itself for reflection on this historical moment - without any dogmatism, without claims to validity and from a deeply personal perspective. Hirschhorn consciously employs »poor« materials as an adequate artistic means of expression. In the first space, there is a hilly landscape collage made from newspaper clippings and adhesive tape on four tables, upon which model railways tirelessly move in a circle. The connecting second space, behind the first one, is dominated by an object wrapped in gold foil, in the form of a cigar and reminiscent of a torpedo. Fragments of texts by the philosopher Marcus Steinweg quote and comment on Friedrich Nietzsche. Word, image and object expose the viewer to a flood of current-events in which collective and individual observations are superimposed. As a direct attempt to deal with history, Doppelgarage reflects - as hardly any other work of contemporary art - the network of hierarchies and dependencies of our society at the beginning of the 21st century in all of its openness and with all of its questions that arise through the proximity to temporal events.
The sculptures North Pole, South Pole and Not in My Name are reminiscent of tombs or sacrificial altars and create connections to ideological value systems that are represented by individual involvement, as well as by dogmatism. Les Quatre Livres (The Four Books) make reference to the intellectual fundamental ideas of the four world religions Judaism (Torah), Christianity (Bible), Islam (Koran) and Buddhism (»The Way to a Meaningful Life« by the Dalai Lama), which represent, in their totality, the background for the variety and also the understanding of the different civilizations and their histories.
In 2004, Doppelgarage was acquired for the museum by PIN. Freunde der Pinakothek der Moderne. In the same year, Thomas Hirschhorn was given the Joseph Beuys Prize by the Beuys Foundation in Basel.
Curator: Bernhart Schwenk
Press preview: March 2, 2005 11:00, Gallery 21
You are cordially invited to the opening of the exhibition on March 2nd at 19:00.
Image: Thomas Hirschhorn: Doppelgarage, 2002
© Pinakothek der Moderne
Courtesy Arndt & Partner, Berlin
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