Christian Boltanski
15 May - 06 Sep 2009
CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI
La vie possible
15 May – 06 September 2009
Christian Boltanski, born in France in 1944, is one of the most internationally acclaimed artists of our time. In 2006 he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale, the Nobel Prize for the Arts presented by the Japanese Imperial Family.
Under the heading "La vie possible", the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein is devoting the largest retrospective exhibition in the German-speaking area since 1991 to Christian Boltanski. It surveys the development of this artist’s oeuvre since the mid-1980s, beginning with a series of the most famous Monuments. The main focus of the exhibition, however, is on his works of the past fifteen years. In a representative cross-section through all the groups of this time-period, plus works produced specially for the exhibition, La vie possible aims to facilitate an experience of the vitality with which the artist explores the possibilities of life itself, "real" life, but also collective life: la vie possible – not only is life basically possible, it is also full of potential for further development.
In the past three decades Boltanski has become an exponent of the "culture of memory" with his spacious installations and the very atmospheric settings of his works. The artist’s images make a complex impact. His intention is not to erect permanent monuments, but to activate memory, i.e., to promote a culture of memory that constantly underscores the living in the face of what has been lost. The Les archives du coeur project in which the artist is in the process of installing an archive of humanity’s heartbeats on the island of Ejima in southern Japan, is also to be seen in this context.
The exhibition illustrates the magnitude with which Boltanski’s work has developed and changed over this period. Works on loan from different museums, but above all from the artist himself, demonstrate how strictly Boltanski has thematically re-oriented his work over about two decades. Very new and as yet unseen works are also on show in the exhibition, which is being produced by the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein and curated by Friedemann Malsch.
Publication
To accompany the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, the interview book La vie possible de Christian Boltanski, which appeared in France in 2008, will be published in a German translation (by Barbara Catoir) by Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne.
La vie possible
15 May – 06 September 2009
Christian Boltanski, born in France in 1944, is one of the most internationally acclaimed artists of our time. In 2006 he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale, the Nobel Prize for the Arts presented by the Japanese Imperial Family.
Under the heading "La vie possible", the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein is devoting the largest retrospective exhibition in the German-speaking area since 1991 to Christian Boltanski. It surveys the development of this artist’s oeuvre since the mid-1980s, beginning with a series of the most famous Monuments. The main focus of the exhibition, however, is on his works of the past fifteen years. In a representative cross-section through all the groups of this time-period, plus works produced specially for the exhibition, La vie possible aims to facilitate an experience of the vitality with which the artist explores the possibilities of life itself, "real" life, but also collective life: la vie possible – not only is life basically possible, it is also full of potential for further development.
In the past three decades Boltanski has become an exponent of the "culture of memory" with his spacious installations and the very atmospheric settings of his works. The artist’s images make a complex impact. His intention is not to erect permanent monuments, but to activate memory, i.e., to promote a culture of memory that constantly underscores the living in the face of what has been lost. The Les archives du coeur project in which the artist is in the process of installing an archive of humanity’s heartbeats on the island of Ejima in southern Japan, is also to be seen in this context.
The exhibition illustrates the magnitude with which Boltanski’s work has developed and changed over this period. Works on loan from different museums, but above all from the artist himself, demonstrate how strictly Boltanski has thematically re-oriented his work over about two decades. Very new and as yet unseen works are also on show in the exhibition, which is being produced by the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein and curated by Friedemann Malsch.
Publication
To accompany the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, the interview book La vie possible de Christian Boltanski, which appeared in France in 2008, will be published in a German translation (by Barbara Catoir) by Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne.