CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI "LES ARCHIVES"
5 SEPTEMBER –14 DECEMBER 2008

'...preserving oneself whole, keeping a trace of all the moments of our lives, all the objects that have surrounded us, everything we’ve said and what’s been said around us, that’s my goal.'

Christian Boltanski, from the catalogue

Magasin 3 opens its fall season with Boltanski’s first solo exhibition in Stockholm. Tessa Praun, curator of the exhibition tells us that: “Experiences of loss and the need to put a face to anonymous suffering forms the thread that runs through much of Boltanski’s body of work. Our individual and collective memories are central to works that often bear the traces of human life – clothes, photos, letters and other personal material. The exhibition is composed of five installations. Their placement is decided by a specific choreography that winds its way through the structure of Boltanski’s muted visual language. It is something of a challenge to the visitor to experience the uncanny and serious, but also at times comical moods created by the exhibition.”

Central to the exhibition is his new work, Les archives du cœur, 2008, in which Boltanski works like an archivist or ethnographer collecting proof of the fragility of the human condition. Tessa Praun, comments that: ”Up until now Boltanski has made use of personal or found materials. The new work will be created by visitors to the exhibition who contribute by donating the sound of their heartbeat. Starting in Stockholm he will collate an archive of recordings of heartbeats, which will be housed on its very own island belonging to the Benesse Art Site Naoshima in Japan. The thought that my heartbeat will be preserved on a Japanese island is startlingly beautiful – I hope that many people will feel the same way and want to donate their heartbeats.”

Curator: Tessa Praun

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