Rome, at MAXXI reunited for the first time all the Pixel-Collages of Thomas Hirschhorn

For the first time, all the works from the Pixel-Collage cycle by Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn (Bern, 1957) are being brought together in a single exhibition: it is titled The Purple Line and is on view at MAXXI in Rome from October 20, 2021 to March 6, 2022. “The world needs to be depixed”: this is how Hirschhorn describes his impressive works ifected between 2015 and 2017, which in Rome are set up following a layout designed by the artist, on a very long purple wall(The PurpleLine, precisely) that runs through Gallery 3.

The project seeks to show the invisible, renegotiating the exhibition context and trying to stimulate the viewer to remain alert and conscious. The power of this research lies in making the audience reflect on the control of images, on their authentication as “facts,” on the possibility of making visible the portions of reality that are subtracted from our gaze through pixellation, a technique in which the image becomes unrecognizable. These works, born from the work of recombining advertising photos side by side with images of mutilated bodies, often create embarrassment in those who look at them, making us reflect on a concept repeatedly expressed by the artist: the rampant hypersensitivity in the contemporary world.

What Hirschhorn seeks is a state of sensitivity, given by a gaze that remains alert and aware of what is around, without denying it; hypersensitivity, on the other hand, often leads to censorship and is paradoxically linked to self-protection and exclusion of the other.

In the image, a partial view of the exhibition Behind Facelessness (Alfonso Artiaco, Naples, April 2017), where Pixel-Collage No. 86 (2017, MAXXI collection, also being acquired thanks to the contribution of Roberto and Nadia Toscano) is shown.

Rome, at MAXXI reunited for the first time all the Pixel-Collages of Thomas Hirschhorn

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