Thomas Hirschhorn is a leading installation artist whose work is owned and exhibited by modern art museums throughout Europe and the United States. Known for his compelling, often site-specific and activated environments which tackle issues of critical theory, global politics, and consumerism, his work initially engages the viewer through sheer superabundance. Combining found images and texts, bound up in handcrafted constructions of cardboard, foil, and packing tape, they correlate to the intellectual scavenging and sensory overload that characterize our own grapplings with the excess of information in daily life. Christina Braun is the first to compile and systematically analyze the extensive source material on this artist’s theoretical principles. Now translated into English, her study sheds light on the complicated yet constitutive relations between Hirschhorn’s work and theory, providing a major contribution to the study of contemporary art.
