Thomas Hirschhorn Exhibition

The Thomas Hirschhorn Exhibition, Dundee - 05/11/09

Thomas Hirschhorn exhibition was like entering a whole new world where bits and pieces from our own had been taken from anywhere available and collaged together to make pictures, paintings, statues, sculptures and devices. This form of collage brought together items dramatically different meticulously placed amongst each other to accentuate contrast. May it be from small plastic robots held together with tape to carefully designed colossal statues; everything had a feel of recycled items. On a design perspective, Thomas Hirschhorn has perfected the art of making other people’s work his own, and rightfully so, by recycling logos and old items to create something new with a deep meaning to it.

From the start, I greatly connected with the work of Thomas Hirschhorn. I have greatly reflected on my own work after seeing his “Ur-Collage” and “Where do I stand? What do I want?” His work touches me mainly because I cannot stop from making assimilation with the cyber-punk and steam-punk genres and his work. Those two genres are like his work: collage, a mix of worlds, technology, techniques and philosophies. The deliberate choice of simple magazine collage techniques gives the artwork a sense of reality. This technique makes the idea of photoshoped pictures and airbrushed photomontages seem distant and put reality back in the realm of the real, and not the glamorised and over-dramatised media.
The work of Thomas Hirschhorn made me reflect a lot about my own work and my preferred technique of perverting man made industrial type objects from their original purpose, may it be as simple as transforming the wall of a squat into a curatorial space. The closest I do feel with the work of Thomas Hirschhorn is the mix of genres, techniques, and subjects, which I have applied to my mix media comics with real photos drawn over with a graphics tablet. Although I use this means to accomplish the opposite of his: I try to use this technique as a way of getting away from reality, when he uses it to make people more aware of reality.

The exhibition of Thomas Hirschhorn is immersive and manages to totally capture the mind of the viewers into his own world. This is what I have been trying to achieve with spray painted comic books, and what I intend to do with spray painted life size characters on the same wall I have already started working on. My ideal with this type of work is to get the spectators into the world created for them and to make them discover something new. The layout of the exhibition is designed in such ways that there is no other option for the spectator than to be part of the new reality created for them. One of my objectives is to gather all the inspiration taken from this exhibition and create my own curatorial comic book space with sole purpose being the total immersion of viewers into the comic book world.