THOMAS HIRSCHHORN at the Power Plant (231 Queens Quay West), from Friday (March 11) to May 29, reception tonight (Thursday, March 10), 6-10 pm. $6, stu/srs $3, free Wednesday 5-8 pm. 416-973-4949. Rating: NNN
It’s impossible to get through Thomas Hirschhorn’s Das Auge (The Eye) without feeling bloodied.
Hirschhorn, who’ll represent Switzerland at the 2011 Venice Biennale, is known for works that are heavily indebted to radical contemporary theory and use ready-made, lo-tech materials. Here he attempts to depict the many disjointed layers of our media culture as a single nightmarish terrain.
The eye and the colour red dominate the massive, claustrophobic installation. Eyeballs, bloodshot, bleeding or vacant, stare as you wind through smaller exhibits of implied or actual atrocities that lead to a raised platform where you can stand inside a giant eye overlooking the room. The view doesn’t cut through the chaos so much as intensify it.
Hirschhorn withholds nothing, and some images of the torn casualties of war, terrorism and the seal hunt may turn even the strongest stomach. His eye is indiscriminate: it does not register differences between what is pleasing and horrific.
Nor is he interested in generating political outrage or moral horror to any particular end. Instead, he attacks the idea of the agenda and representation at their philosophical roots, turning the unwieldy machinery of media and image propagation against itself.
With its Dadaist clutter, paranoia and relentless gore, Hirschhorn’s show – on its first North American stop in the renovated Power Plant – might not be for everyone. Beneath the visual hysteria, however, he consistently hides several subtle and intelligent conceits. The rows of empty plastic chairs with xeroxed faces affixed with packing tape, for instance, are a beautiful visual metaphor for the society of the spectacle as envisioned by Situationist Guy Debord.
Fans of French postmodern theorists will probably chuckle and nod knowingly at the many visual and theoretical puns.
Others, however, might run for the nearest bathroom.
art@nowtoronto.com
