Collateral Thinking. 2007. paper, prints, stickers, felt pen, ball point pen, plastic foil, adhesive tape. 160 x 207 cm

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Uncomfortable Truths. 2007. paper, prints, stickers, felt pen, ball point pen, plastic foil, adhesive tape. 160 x 207 cm

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Blue Series (Body Mass Index B.M.I). 2001. drawings and watercolors. mixed media

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Grape (Anna! Anna!). 2006. paper, prints, stickers, felt pen, ball point pen, plastic foil, adhesive tape. 84 x 89 cm

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Concretion I to XVII (exhibition view at Galerie Chantal Crousel). 2007. Paper, printed matters, ball-point pen, plastic sheet, brown adhesive tape. 85 x 88 cm each. Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Chantal Crousel

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Light Box (exhibition view at Galerie Chantal Crousel). 2007. Plexiglas, brown adhesive tape and photography. 96 x 130 x 24 cm. Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Chantal Crousel

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Last month, Swiss artist THOMAS HIRSCHHORN, together with ANDREA THAL, has been announced as the Swiss representative in the 2011 Venice Biennale. His participation in past international exhibitions has sometimes taken the form of radical interventions, as at Documenta XI in 2002, when he built his installations in a town a few miles from the exhibition’s home base of Kassel, Germany, forcing people to travel to see the work in a modest suburb.

THOMAS HIRSCHHORN is best known for his hypersaturated installations, out of seemingly amateurish accumulations of cardboard, plywood, plastics and tinfoil. Most of them are held together by a paranoid application of masking tape (rolls and rolls of it). Half-sculptural, half-architectural and fully revolutionary, some of his most elaborate installations transform ordinary spaces into a labyrinthine, parallel universe of hybrid forms and fascinating accumulations.

His work gathers together references to philosophy and popular culture, economics and poetry, artists and fashion designers, in a bombardment of information and imagery. The initial effect is overwhelming, but close attention reveals careful explorations of the contemporary socio-cultural climate. THOMAS HIRSCHHORN’s works often scandalise, triggering vehement debate and controversy but his distinctive way of looking for fragile and unstable formal solutions for controversial social, economic and cultural issues has brought the Paris-based Swiss artist international renown.

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