One of the most energetic and uncompromising artists of our time, Thomas Hirschhorn generally goes in for monumental environments, built of disposable materials (cardboard, tinfoil, packing tape), which address issues like democracy, the precariousness of the social contract and the culture of waste. In his new collages, he takes on the way the media often censors sensitive images through pixelation.
The works contain such horrors culled from the internet as bodies bloodied, mutilated or blown to bits by conflict and terrorism. Each collage combines these gruesome, unaltered photographs with innocuous pictures pixelated by the artist.
In one piece, a grieving woman holds the bloody hand of her companion, while a nearby mound of gray and blue pixels seems to embody her despair. Another shocking image depicts four corpses with their pants pulled down, paired with cheerfully colored pixels obscuring a photo of wildly patterned textiles.
This show is less complex than Hirschhorn’s more ambitious installations. Nevertheless, it is of a piece with his other work. Neither apolitical nor amoral, Hirschhorn’s art reflects the world as it is, in all its chaos and beauty. What we do with that information is up to us.