Thomas Hirschhorn - World Corners

Thomas Hirschhorn’s first solo exhibition in the UK takes the form of a multimedia installation that is a direct response to the distinctive space of Chisenhale Gallery. As with much of Hirschhorn's work, its basis depends upon an aggregation of disparate elements, orchestrated within a highly imaginative framework. Using magazine images, TVs, floating flags and copious quantities of silver-foil, sticky tape, cardboard and cling-film, the artist transforms the four corners of the gallery into ‘World Corners’.

Radiating outwards into the gallery while independently representing political, economic, religious or cultural identities, these four corners compete for influence over the visitor through a number of strategies. Each corner is linked by cables of foil strung like telephone lines, thus diffusing the energy of each corner across the space. Looking little different from one another and thoroughly confused, each corner refers more to quotidian existence than to ‘world’ themes.

By realising the installation through his trademark makeshift vernacular, Hirschhorn explores the commonplace activities that compete for our attention and describes an everyday experience of the world rooted in trash and trivia.

Thomas Hirschhorn was born in Bern, Switzerland and currently lives and works in Paris. In the 1980s he worked in Paris as a graphic artist, and was part of the group of Communist graphic designers called Grapus. He received the (2000/2001) Marcel Duchamp Prize and the Joseph Beuys Prize in 2004.

Thomas Hirschhorn
World Corners