Collage on cardboard, transparent adhesive tape
240x160cm
A ruin, as such, is a deserted place, a dehumanized place. A ruin is an abstract, timeless place, free of values. By using the black-and-white technique I wanted to simplify the poster's statement and strengthen its mission as a poster. My work opposes ruin fetishism and ruin tourism, because a ruin is a form. A ruin is something which has been shaped, it's not an aesthetic, a reproduction or a reconstruction – a ruin is pure form. There is nothing to gain from speculating or questioning: what was there before? Why does it look like this? A ruin "is", a ruin "is" itself, it stands on its own, a ruin is "Ruin". As a beginning, a ruin is an assertion and affirms its form as "Ruin". Could everything, the entire universe, have come from destruction, and started from a ruin and chaos? Could everything have developed from chaos? Could there have been nothing before but a "Ruin"? [...]
The ten works are posters.* They are posters like those that one hangs on a wall in a room, and therefore they require a certain size. On the ten posters there are images of small or large ruins combined together. By using different sizes for each element, I want to emphasize, reinforce and clarify the assertion that "A Ruin is a Ruin". On the collage I pasted together – the technique is collage – what is meant to be distinct: age difference, provenance difference, subject difference, value difference. What really counts is that no ruin is "innocent". All ruins connect beyond time and beyond location – a ruin is universal and timeless. The charged and complex meaning of a ruin gives it – as a form – density, dynamic and, above all, its necessity. [...]
Thomas Hirschhorn, January 2016
