This week’s art post features the work of French conceptual artist Christian Boltanski (1944-2021). Boltanski’s work has a contemplative, poetic, ethnological quality. Absence, the remains and impact of war, the silenced subject, and the power of memory all are investigated, as is a quiet celebration of the dignity and poetics inherent in the mundane.

Depart-Arrive, 2015.

La Traversee de la Vie, 2015.

Depart-Arrive, 2015.

The Reserve of Dead Swiss, 1990.

Le Manteau, 2000.

Lumieres (Catherine), 2000.

Lumieres (Pierre, Henri, Florence, Jeannette, Marie), 2000

Lumieres (Christian, Francoise, Martine), 2000

“His work was rich in visual and aural impact, and open-ended in its invitation to the viewer to contemplate the past and partake in the present moment — for what has been lost and what endures.”

— Merrian Goodman Gallery

Photo Credit:

MetaLocus, BOLTANSKI AT IVAM: DÉPART - ARRIVÉE

Jupiter Art, CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI:THEATRE D'OMBRES

Art Dex, Memory and Mortality: Christian Boltanski

Art Review, The Spectres of Christian Boltanski

Nowness Asia, Everyone and No One, The Art of Christian Boltanski

Merrian Goodman Gallery, Depart-Arrive

Merrian Goodman Gallery, Christian Boltanski Selected Works

Portrait Credit: Art Dex, Memory and Mortality: Christian Boltanski