Via his immersive installations or bombastic collages spawned from a unique combination of low-fi materials and radical philosophy, Hirschhorn’s project has been to encourage people to look around them and critically examine what they see, to question the gaps between image and reality in our mediated world. Even when the reality is a headless corpse. In 2015 his work was everywhere. His 2013 Gramsci Monument project in the Bronx was the subject of a documentary film by Angelo A. Lüdin.
His immersive installation Nachwirkung (Aftermath) opened at the Kunsthalle Bremen and his collages transformed the project room of the MAN in Nuoro, Italy. His installation in the Central Pavilion of the Venice Biennale simulated the collapse of that structure’s roof, and he brought a similarly apocalyptic scenario to the South London Gallery, complete with a quotation that takes the work back to Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci: ‘Destruction is difficult, indeed it is as difficult as creation.’ Difficult for some.
