Last July 5th, the exhibition Boltanski. Départ-Arrivée. opened., curated by the director of Intitut Valencià d'Art Modern [IVAM] José Miguel G. Cortés, and Boltanski himself, who was awarded with the XIV Julio Gonzalez International Prize. Two of the exhibition’s pieces - La Traversée de la vie (2015) and Départ - Arrivée (2015), which gives the name to it - are exhibited for the first time in our country. Boltanski's work is present in the collections of the greatest museums around the world, and it focuses on issues such as the passage of time, memory, the human being fragility or death.
"The older we are, the greater the impression of walking on a minefield. Friends blow up around us and tomorrow, perhaps, it’s our turn."
This Christian Boltanski’s phrase (Paris, 1944) refers clearly the big issues passing through their works and installations and marking his artistic career. Memory, loss and death are the main concepts - almost obsessions - in Boltanski's work. As well as his backs into oblivion, forgetfulness, chance and the almost nonexistent trace any life leaves after disappearing. What evoked the disappearance of childhood, the death of their parents or collective death in other stages of his career, now it’s focused on its own end.
All these aspects are reflected and analyzed in the Christian Boltanski’s exhibition, held on the occasion of the awarding of the 2014 Julio Gonzalez International Prize, who has 7 large installations distributed by the IVAM gallery 1.
When we see a work of Christian Boltanski we cannot avoid to ”react" because the common experience of losing a family member or a loved one creates a gap in our lives that sometimes is hastily and incompletely replaced, when we find an old photo that was totally forgotten, for example. That value of images permeates the artistic work of this author, becoming an engine that brings out hidden or semi-forgotten sensations. In this sense, the French artist has expressed in various ways their interest in the individualized memory, small examples that cause a reaction in the collective: "I'm interested in the little stories of individuals who are not famous," and on another occasion: "We must speak in a sufficiently general way so that everyone can regain some of its own past, its own culture, their own desires".
The exhibition is completed with a free publication produced as a newspaper; a way that - material and conceptually - refers to periodicity, time and physical deterioration.
