Portrait of Christian Boltanski, Venice Biennale 2011 French Pavilion Photo: Didier Plowy
Christian Boltanski
Christian Boltanski‟s The Heart Archive was the 2012 IHME Project as it combined features such as audience participation and community. Christian Boltanski deals with topical, universally human themes, and thus also speaks to a broad public. In The Heart Archive all the participants' heartbeats are equally important, and anyone can take part. The work also deals with temporality, individual and shared experience, and memory.
Christian Boltanski (b. 1944) is a distinguished French artist, who lives in Malakoff, Paris. He began his career as a self-taught painter in the 1960s, but his production also includes photographs, films and installations. Boltanski's international breakthrough came in the 1980s with photographic tableaus about death. Later holocaust became a prevailing theme in his work. Some underlying themes in his production are human existence, memory and childhood. Boltanski‟s works frequently take the form of private archives.
" -- To Boltanski, uniting art and life is essential in order to make effective and meaningful work. 'For me, he has remarked, „painting isn‟t provocative or moving, only life is moving. But I am an artist and therefore all I do is termed art. […] The fascinating moment for me is when the spectator hasn‟t registered the art connection, and the longer I can delay this association the better.' "
- Mary Jane Jacob -
Christian Boltanski‟s works have been shown in various parts of the world and acquired for major collections. In Finland Boltanski‟s works have been shown in a solo exhibition produced by Helsinki Festival at Kunsthalle Helsinki in 1997, and some of them are also in the collection of Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma.
Further information: Marian Goodman Gallery, www.mariangoodman.com