Thomas goes for the burn

Philosophy is a significant element in his work. “I love philosophy, it gives me time to think about what I don’t understand.”

In the past he has constructed monuments to Bataille, Deleuze, Foucault and Spinoza and describes himself as a “fan” of philosophers, likening them to artists in their interplay of form and concepts. He is noted for his room-sized collages of low-grade materials.

They are immersive environments, a visceral barrage of ideas constructed from everyday consumables. It is important for Hirschhorn that his choices of materials are easily recognisable, that people understand them.

“I use them because I love them ... for political reasons I love them. They’re kind of egalitarian, not arty, that’s very important. It’s a political statement.”

The main gallery is dominated by a 20-metre fallen tree trunk which runs the length of the space. Its trunk and jutting branches are constructed from cardboard and parcel tape, crudely painted to mimic woodgrain.

The floor and walls are covered with the same cardboard, the rest of the space is strewn with objects and mannequins – some clothed in wedding dresses decorated with images of burning, others with holes roughly cut through the centre of them standing in ranks inside a “control cabin” illuminated with strip lights. There are torsos and limbs heaped in a corner, wooden objects, canisters, plastic chairs, piles of real wood and cardboard planks and branches, a detritus of combustible debris.

Hirschhorn explains: “I wanted to construct a megaform, which has a mission to explode the space and to be dynamic.”

There is certainly an explosive power to his work, which unleashes a torrent of cultural references, filled with layers of significance, which can be overwhelming for the viewer. He drags lofty ideas from their ivory towers and combines them with the material waste of the everyday, creating didactic, hybrid montages.

The fires implied by the show’s title, It’s Burning Everywhere, refer to “not only hostile fires. It’s also something that can give warmth. There are many ways to make fire.”

The fires are not necessarily negative, but for Hirschhorn they are always indicative of the human condition, a signifier for what he calls a “human presence”.

The combustion is not spontaneous but a result of human action. “I did not want to make the exhibition just about the flames, or even fires” but about “what contributes to burn. That’s why there is so much wood.”

These piles of wood, cardboard branches and gas canisters are ideas ignited by human ideologies and problems. “Why it is burning on the world? Because there are different ideas in the world.”

For Hirschhorn they are “not just natural things that happened” but are “because the human has a problem”. The fires of these problems rage, consuming the world, but are overshadowed by the fact that when they stop burning the problems remain.

The mannequins serve as multi-functional symbols: they are the incendiary action and that which is consumed; a surface for display; a sense of human proportion; combustible archetypes of his world view. He sees humans as “mannequins that wear something”. They are “subjectors, not the subject”, explains Hirschhorn.

In the two smaller gallery spaces, Hirschhorn is re-presenting two of his more recent works Unforgettable and Ur Collages. Unforgettable was made in 2007 for the Stephen Friedman Gallery in London. It shares the same concerns and formal characteristics reflected in It’s Burning Everywhere. Mannequins and cardboard cut-outs feature.

He describes this work as a “stage ... an interrogation about bodies, the presence of bodies, destructed bodies in the world today ... different everyday occupations and situations.”

The Ur Collages, made last year, are very small collages which contain two elements from printed matter. This is what associates the two images, not the content of the images. They are both conflicting and contradictory, like much of Hirschhorn’s work. He carefully selects one from a fashion magazine, the other is a printed image from the internet. He describes these pieces as “burning points themselves”.

Accessing different audiences is critical for Hirschhorn. He says: “I am trying to connect my work with what I call a non-exclusive audience”. One of his most recent projects was the Bijlmer Spinoza Festival, a two-month festival that he organised in the Bijlmer neighbourhood of Amsterdam.

“I was there for three months, all the time, every day – and why? Because it is based on presence and production”.

A month was spent constructing the event and then two months running it. Hirschhorn invited two philosophers and an art historian to contribute to the 16 different elements that made up the project such as daily lectures, exhibitions, a Spinoza library, staged plays, workshops, and a bar. He called it a, “festival, as it is something precarious or limited in time.”

This was a work in an uncontrolled public space, and engaged a different audience. Many of his early sculptural and graphic works were positioned in public spaces, alternative galleries or squats. “Overall I confront people with my work in both museums and out in the street,” he has said.

Hirschhorn is unequivocal when talking about his work, perhaps too explicit and at times contradictory. However, discussing the work with the artist is entirely different from experiencing it as a viewer.

There is an appealing aesthetic to the work that doesn’t require much explanation. It is not necessary for the viewer to grasp all the intricacies. There is a scale, energy and intensity to Hirschhorn’s work, creating complex networks of references, humour, conflict, chaos, ideologies rubbing against each other igniting the world burning everywhere.

It’s Burning Everywhere opens at Dundee Contemporary Arts tomorrow and runs until November 29.