Christian Boltanski
«Réliquaire»

Christian Boltanski discovered the most important elements of his art by reconstructing his childhood with the aid of records and consistently carrying on the concept of the examination of past and non-permanence on a general level. In his works he sets out on a kind of search for clues, frequently making use of photographs he has found in estates, family albums, or old newspapers, which he enlarges into abstract silhouettes. He uses utensils associated with the subject of memory—old articles of clothing, tin boxes, archive cartons, toys—to produce the image of a fragmentarily put together past or reconstructed identity, which, however, do not contain a clear indication as to the person's destiny. Rather the viewer is confronted with the symbolic and implied biography of a person, which allows a certain «presence of death» [Serge Lemoine] to nearly become tangible.

Heike Borowski