Thomas Hirschhorn. Provide Ruins III. 2003

Thomas Hirschhorn Provide Ruins III 2003

  • Not on view

In this series Hirschhorn pairs the extreme brutality of war with the world of advertising and commerce. Since the 1980s he has made socially engaged works that confront viewers and implicate them in the creation of meaning, combining images and text from mass culture with everyday materials like cardboard, cellophane, and duct tape in deliberately crude collages. Here he has paired images of war-torn buildings and victims of war with the faces of fashion models, all overlaid with blue ink that appears to stream and seep from the figures like tears or blood. The work's title, Provide Ruins, mimics the names the military and the media bestowed on war operations, such as Desert Shield and Restore Hope.

Publication excerpt from The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights since 1980, New York: The Museum of Modern Art , p. 243.
Medium
Cut-and-pasted printed paper with felt-tip pen, ballpoint pen, and pressure-sensitive tape on paper wrapped in synthetic polymer sheet
Dimensions
20 1/2 x 23 1/2" (52.1 x 59.7 cm)
Credit
The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection Gift
Object number
1865.2005.3
Copyright
© 2021 Thomas Hirschhorn
Department
Drawings and Prints

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