Thomas Hirschhorn, live on mars

Thomas Hirschhorn produces impassioned, voracious, and deliberately overabundant sculptural works, public projects, and immersive environments in incredible proliferation. His frequently confrontational art is dedicated to...

Thomas Hirschhorn produces impassioned, voracious, and deliberately overabundant sculptural works, public projects, and immersive environments in incredible proliferation. His frequently confrontational art is dedicated to resistance and the voicing of his discontent with contemporary politics and public discourse, while at the same time trusting in the transformative potential of art and philosophy. Shunning associations with fine art, Hirschhorn uses rudimentary packaging materials, such as cardboard, tape, plywood, and polystyrene; and he frequently festoons his tableaux with images of advertisements, pornography, and global news journalism, as well as copious photocopied texts from radical writers like Georges Bataille and Antonio Negri. Cavemanman (2002) is a sprawling, shambolic network of cardboard caves, a spectacular information-crammed labyrinth of slogans and tableaux concerning Iraq-war militarism and martyrdom, sadomasochism, and materialistic greed. This unforgiving environment follows what the artist has called archaeologies--works that excavate and examine the brutality and consumerism of our time. Harrowing images deal, for Hirschhorn, in a condition of such intensity and turmoil that they offer a chance to not understand--their value lies precisely in resisting explanation and euphemism. --- Life on Mars, the 2008 Carnegie International Widely known as one of the pre-eminent international surveys of contemporary art in the world, the Carnegie International was founded at the behest of industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1896. With the Venice Biennale, the Carnegie International is the oldest such exhibition in the world. Titled Life on Mars, the 2008 Carnegie International will focus on the increasingly relevant question of what it means to be human in the world today. The exhibition presents work by 40 artists who investigate particular aspects of the human condition, moving along paths that are both introspective and worldly while poetically traversing the dramatic spectrum from tragedy to comedy. See fore more info www.thomas-hirschhorn.com