DEUS EX BOLTANSKI
by Robert Gardner

This year the much beloved and admired French artist Christian Boltanski was given the immense confines of the Grand Palais in Paris to install a piece entitled PERSONNES. For the French, 'personne' means both a person and a no one. The installation was concerned with the presence and absence of people in an enormous amount (30 tons) of clothing. When Boltanski sees a discarded coat he is seeing a dead person who has left that coat behind. There are a great number of dead people in this MONUMENTA installation.

Robert Gardner has known Boltanski since the 1970s, when he invited him to the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard as a visting artist, and the following years since Boltanski has become a major figure in the art world. In January Gardner and photographer Michael Hutcherson travelled to Paris to make a film about him and the PERSONNES installation process. Rebecca Meyers is currently engaged in editing video footage which will be premiered at the Harvard Film Archive October 29, 2010.

Owing to the vast number of high definition still images gathered, there is the further likelihood of one or more publications of a print nature being done as well.

Related links:
Monumenta 2010, January 13 - February 21, 2010
Park Avenue Armory, May 14 - June 13, 2010
Marian Goodman Gallery