Life and Works
In the 1980s, Hirschhorn worked in Paris as a graphic artist. He was part of the group of Communist graphic designers called Grapus. These artists were concerned with politics and culture, displaying impromptu creations and posters on the street mostly using the language of advertisement. He left Grapus to create the hypersaturated installations he is known for today, using common materials such as cardboard, foil, duct tape, and plastic wrap. He has described his choice to use everyday materials in his work as "political" and that he only uses materials that are “universal, economic, inclusive, and don’t bear any plus-value”. Hirschorn's installations are often site specific and outside the gallery, and/or interactive. He continues to offer messages in his work, as he did with Grapus. He has said that he is interested in the “hard core of reality”, without disillusions, and has displayed a strong to commitment to his work and role as an artist. He has described working and production as “necessary”, discounting anyone who encourages him to not work hard, and says “I want to be overgiving in my work”. Austrian author and Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek takes issue with the artist's views on Marxism. In a 2008 interview, the artist said that he was not aware of her concerns.
For his piece Cavemanman, he transformed a gallery space into a cave using wood, cardboard, and tape and put various philosophical and pop culture symbols throughout it.
Hirschhorn received the (2000/2001) Marcel Duchamp Prize and the Joseph Beuys Prize in 2004. His works are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Tate.
He presented a lecture as part of the "Image & Text: Writing Off The Page" lecture series through the Visiting Artists Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Spring, 2006.
In the summer of 2009, his work Cavemanman was recreated for the exhibition Walking in my Mind at London's Hayward Gallery.
In June 2011, Hirschhorn represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale.
Thomas Hirschhorn is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and ARNDT Berlin.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Hirschhorn
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or works:
“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“I have all my life been on my guard against the information conveyed by the sense of hearing—it being one of my earliest observations, the universal inclination of humankind is to be led by the ears, and I am sometimes apt to imagine that they are given to men as they are to pitchers, purposely that they may be carried about by them.”
—Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu (1689–1762)
“Was it an intellectual consequence of this ‘rebirth,’ of this new dignity and rigor, that, at about the same time, his sense of beauty was observed to undergo an almost excessive resurgence, that his style took on the noble purity, simplicity and symmetry that were to set upon all his subsequent works that so evident and evidently intentional stamp of the classical master.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)