calendario eventi  :: 

X

7/10/2009

Thomas Hirschhorn

La Casa Encendida, Madrid

Curator Ignacio Cabrero

The artist describes "The Subjecters", his first individual exhibition in Madrid, as a commentary on the "complex, chaotic, cruel, beautiful and wonderful" world we live in. Installations, sculptures and vitrines containing mannequins will all be on show

Three of the works featured have never before been exhibited: "INGROWTH", produced by La Casa Encendida, "Tool Vitrine" and "Subjecter", which lends its name to the exhibition. "The Subjecters" is also the global term for the artist’s works with mannequins

At 6 pm on 8 October, La Casa Encendida will host an encounter with the Swiss artist, moderated by the French critic François Piron, the author of one of the essays in the catalogue

"The Subjecters", which will be on display at La Casa Encendida of Obra Social Caja Madrid from 9 October to 5 January, comprises a series of vitrines with mannequins and two installations. According to the artist, every work is a "commentary" on the "complex, chaotic, cruel, beautiful and wonderful" world we live in.

The work of Thomas Hirschhorn (Bern, 1957) is a politically committed reflection on contemporary reality. Employing a variety of disciplines such as sculpture, video and installation, Hirschhorn produces works charged with social and political criticism.

Using everyday materials such as adhesive tape, cardboard, sheets of plastic, photocopies or, as in this case, mannequins, he represents universal situations in a transgressive, direct way. Through the mannequins, which are intended to represent human beings, the artist talks to us of a "universal wound", which personifies his assertion, "Each wound is my wound."

The exhibition begins with a newly produced piece, "INGROWTH", which unlike the other works was originally planned to be exhibited in a public space in Paris. However, as it never went on display, it will receive its first showing here at La Casa Encendida. For Hirschhorn, a vitrine is a public space because it is an enclosed place which exhibits an object for a hypothetical audience.

In addition to this piece, the artist has produced two new works for the project: "Tool Vitrine" and "Subjecter", which lends its name to the title of the exhibition. In "Tool Vitrine", a mannequin appears to threaten us with a hammer, although he might just be going about his daily work, surrounded by all kinds of tools. The implements are typical of those used by the inhabitants of industrial areas such as Aubervilliers, where the artist has his studio. In the midst of the tools, as if it were an instruction manual, sits a copy of Spinoza’s "Ethics", one of Thomas Hirschhorn’s favourite books. Meanwhile, in "Subjecter", a single mannequin riddled with nails appears outside the vitrines, like a fetishistic representation of a human figure.

The mannequins in the works are all "connected" in some way with society, be it through the tattoos on the surface of "4 Women", the magazines that highlight body care in "Mono Vitrine (Interview)", the art books on Goya that remind us of the horrors of war in "Mono-Vitrine (Goya)", the tools in the piece "Tool Vitrine", or the Manga figurines in "INGROWTH". Completing the exhibition are two installations situated in the middle of the room, "Black&White Hemisphere" and "The One World".

The Subjecters
"The Subjecters" is the title of the exhibition but also the global term for the pieces the artist has made with mannequins or parts of them. As the artist himself says, "The mannequin (or the parts of mannequins) is not the Subject – it’s a Subjecter. The Subjecter is an invention of mine – it stands for what I cannot give a name but for what I can give form (and must give form, as the artist), and I worked it out with the form of mannequins, which is not new in the history of art, but which is a form to express the ‘closest-far-away of myself.’"

Thomas Hirschhorn has been using mannequins for several years now, regarding them as a material that is "inclusive and non-intimidating, unpretentious and democratic, non-hierarchical and simple", like the adhesive tapes, tinfoil and magazine clippings that he usually employs in his installations. As he says, there is nothing new about this: Dada and Surrealist artists worked with mannequins back in the Twenties, questioning every convention about art through the use of unusual materials, chaos against order, and the mixture of genres and materials associated with collages. Indeed, Thomas Hirschhorn admires the collages by John Heartfield, Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters and, most particularly, what he regards as a 3D collage, the "Grosses-Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama" collage by the Dada artist Johannes Baader.

"Mannequins are a "headless" form of my fellow man, a form I give to the other outside myself. A mannequin represents the smallest distance between myself and the image of the other. A mannequin is another form of myself. It is a surface on to which I project myself…" Thomas Hirschhorn (Art Review: Where do I stand? What do I want?, s/p, 2007).

This representation of the universal through mannequins, magazines, books and images of mutilated bodies is not connected in any way with the representation of killings or death, but with the destruction, or rather self-destruction to which we are currently subjected. It is the representation of the universal wound in which we are all immersed: "(…) Each wound is my wound. Each death is my death. Each sorrow is my sorrow. I am the oppressor and I am the victim, and no one else. I am the only one responsible." The mannequins represent the universal wound for which the artist feels responsible.

Encounter with Thomas Hirschhorn
Coinciding with the opening of the exhibition "The Subjecters" at La Casa Encendida, the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn (Bern, 1957) will participate in an encounter with the public at 6 pm on 8 October. In addition to exhibiting at numerous museums and art galleries, Thomas Hirschhorn has conceived much of his work for public spaces. The artist will talk about his latest project for a public space in an Amsterdam neighbourhood, "The Biljmer Spinoza-Festival", a sculpture conceived in the fashion of a giant book by the philosopher Spinoza. The French critic François Piron will moderate the encounter.

Biography of Thomas Hirschhorn
Thomas Hirschhorn (Bern, Swizterland, 1957) lives in Paris. Between 1978 and 1983 he trained as an artist at the Schule für Gestaltung in Zurich. He conceives his work specifically for the site for which it is intended: the museum in the case of his sculptures; the street in the case of his "altars", "kiosks" and "monuments". References to fashion, art, politics and philosophy intermingle paradoxically in his work. Personal commitment and involvement are key issues for Hirschhorn, which he transports to the realm of art via tributes to his favourite artists and writers from the 20th century, such as the "altars" he mounts in quiet public spaces or the ephemeral tributes he dedicates to Spinoza (Amsterdam, 1999), Deleuze (Avignon, 2000) and Bataille (Kassel, 2002). He has exhibited at galleries around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago (1998); the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (2001); the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (2005); the Museu de Serralves in Porto (2005); the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico (2008); and Secession in Vienna (2008). He has just produced a new "tribute" to Spinoza in Amsterdam, "The Bijlmer Spinoza-Festival" 2009.

About the curator: Ignacio Cabrero
Ignacio Cabrero Rodríguez has worked at La Casa Encendida of Obra Social Caja Madrid since 2001, and has occupied the post of cultural manager since 2004. He has participated as a speaker in numerous courses and seminars, and has been a jury member for events such as the 2008 Basque Country Visual Arts Assessment Committee and the 2009 grants-for-artists scheme administered by the Provincial Council of Guipúzcoa. He collaborates in the nomination of artists-in-residence for the contemporary arts centre CENTQUATRE in Paris, and this year he co-curated the "À la limite" exhibition at the Salle Michel Journiac, Paris. He is currently curating an exhibition on European video artists, and is also preparing a research paper for the Université Sorbonne Paris 1 on the artist Thomas Hirschhorn.

About the catalogue
This will be a 72-page fanzine-type publication with reproductions of the works featured in the exhibition and texts by Ignacio Cabrero, the exhibition curator, David Joselit, a lecturer in Art History and Culture at Yale University (USA), and François Piron, a freelance curator, art critic and lecturer in Contemporary Art Theory and History at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Lyon. He is also currently a member of the castillo/corrales space in Paris and of its publishing house Paraguay Press.

Image: Ingrowth, 2009, 1500 x 100 x 236 cm. Courtesy Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris

Communication and Marketing Department
La Casa Encendida Tel: 91 506 38 84

Opening 8 October 6 pm

La Casa Encendida Room A
Ronda de Valencia 2 Madrid
Free Admission

stampa

permanent link