Thomas Hirschhorn

Description

Part-text, part-sculpture, part-architecture, part-junk heap, Thomas Hirschhorn'soften monumental but precarious works offer a commentary on the spectacle of late-capitalist consumerism and the global proliferation of commodities. In this book Dezeuze offers a generously illustrated examination of Hirschhorn's Deleuze Monument (2000), the second in his series of four Monuments. Deleuze Monument - a sculpture, an altar, and a library dedicated to Gilles Deleuze - was conceived as a work open to visitors twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Part of the exhibition "La Beauté" in Avignon, Deleuze Monument was controversial from the start, and it was dismantled two months before the end of the exhibition after being vandalized.Dezeuze describes the chronology of the project, including negotiations with local residents; the dynamic between affirmation and vulnerability in Hirschhorn's work; failure and "scatterart" in the 1990s; participatory practices; and problems of presence, maintenance, andappearance, raised by Hirschhorn's acknowledgement of "error" in his discontinuouspresence on site following the installation of Deleuze Monument