A hybrid of dorm room, al-Qaeda cave, hermit’s lair, philosopohical nerve center, and subterranean beer-drinking hideout, Thomas Hirschhorn’s installation Cavemanman is taking shape in Galleries, 4, 5 and 6 for next weekend’s opening of Heart of Darkness: Kai Althoff, Ellen Gallagher and Edgar Cleijne, Thomas Hirschhorn. Nearly complete, the winding tunnel–made of wood, cardboard, and packing tape–is lit by blinding fluorescent lights and decorations including posters of Che Guevara and a topless Pamela Anderson, wall clocks showing time zones in various cities, videos showing other caves, and filled trash bags. The installation completely transforms a gallery where just a few weeks ago Diane Arbus’ photography appeared in a clean, solemn, museum-y space. The effect, even half-finished, as I experienced it today, is remarkable. As the Village Voice commented when the artist installed the piece in 2002:
There’s a primal satisfaction in walking into a haughty, high-stakes, white-cube Chelsea gallery to find that you’ve entered a messy, makeshift cave. The cavernous labyrinth of lumpy tunnels, nooks and crannies, rocky pathways, and culs-de-sac, all clumsily made of cardboard, aluminum foil, and miles of shiny mud-brown wrapping tape, is preposterous, slapdash, sort of womb-like, and vaguely intestinal. Its bumpy ground is littered with very fake rocks. Cans of Sprite and Coca-Cola litter the floor and overflow from gold foil garbage cans. Xeroxed pages from books about justice and democracy are taped to the walls. And in addition to us transient viewers, stumbling along its paths disoriented and bemused, the five-room cave is inhabited by clusters of aluminum foil figures and foil-wrapped shopwindow mannequins, who are linked by foil cords to make-believe explosives or books. Hostages or terrorists, throwbacks to the past or refugees from the future, these figures also evoke, quite by chance, the recent episode in a Moscow theater, but Cavemanman was in the works long before that site of cultural production was overtaken or stormed. The slogan scrawled repeatedly on the cave’s walls, “1 man = 1 man,” has to do not with terror but with absolute equality.
Hear Hirschhorn speak at a free gallery talk tonight, and while you’re here don’t miss our other cave, a winding hilly path only wide enough for one lantern-bearing visitor to navigate at a time, installed in the exhibition Cameron Jamie (closing October 22).
[…] The day after Thomas Hirchhorn’s tape, foil, and cardboard cave opens in Heart of Darkness, the exhibition Cameron Jamie closes, darkening another cave, Jamie’s Maps and Composite Actions. Well worth a visit–the show closes October 22–the gallery-sized installation is a steep path through a constructed landscape made from chicken wire embedded with clay (sold only in Europe, it is used to make curved walls in housing construction, says Walker assistant curator Yasmil Raymond). The path is dark and so narrow that only one person, carrying a lantern, can experience it at a time. The entry and exit to this cave are the same, and at the bottom of the twisting, bumpy walk are drawings and collages of a distinctly Halloween flavor. […]
Pingback by Visual Arts » Closing: Cameron’s Cave — 10/17/2006 @ 11:08 am
Hi, i’m reading your excellent blogs from Spain using an RSS reader, congrats. just a comment off the record: could you please check “For each article, show: Full text” under Options-Writing in your admin panel? that would ease the reading a lot to those ones that use a RSS reader, thanks a lot! promise a comment content-related next time.
Comment by Chema — 10/19/2006 @ 12:59 pm
Absolutely, Chema. Thanks for the tip.
Comment by Paul Schmelzer — 10/20/2006 @ 3:58 pm
[…] After several weeks building Thomas Hirschhorn’s Cavemanman, Walker carpenter/installation technician Doc Czypinski says he occasionally forgets he’s not in a real cave. The packing tape-and-cardboard structure isn’t necessarily convincing in its materials, but its winding corridors and arched ceilings capture a compelling kind of cave-ness: labyrinthine, embracing, immersive. Part of the show Heart of Darkness, opening in just a few hours, the piece’s construction transformed a museum gallery where only weeks ago Diane Arbus’ photos were displayed into a subterranean cavern of consumption and philosophy. […]
Pingback by Off Center » Speleology 101 — 10/20/2006 @ 4:30 pm
[…] Visual Arts - 1 pumpkin = 1 pumpkin “Inspired by Thomas Hirschhorn’s Cavemanman. This installation/environment is part of the Heart of Darkness exhibition.” […]
Pingback by Off Center » The (conceptual) art of pumpkin carving: Vol III — 10/31/2006 @ 6:10 pm
[…] When Swiss-born artist Thomas Hirschhorn visited the Walker last month to install Cavemanman, he spent a few minutes with me discussing the piece, a massive network of tunnels and caves made from cardboard, mailing tape, aluminum foil, and other everyday materials. In this interview, our first Walker Audio Blog entry, he discusses how his work is a “collage in the third dimension,” the historical and contemporary influences behind the piece, and how the cave is a good metaphor for the mind. […]
Pingback by Off Center » Audio Blog: Thomas Hirschhorn — 11/6/2006 @ 4:48 pm
[…] When you walk through one of Thomas Hirschhorn’s massive installations, like Cavemanman, it’s hard to miss his philosophical influences: Bataille, Foucault, Kant, de Toqueville, Thoreau, Mann, Locke. Less obvious, however, are the decidedly lower-brow influences on his gigantic works–”Road Side Giants” including the Jolly Green Giant statue in Blue Earth, Minnesota; Sphinx Realty’s Los Angeles namesake; and the gigantic muskellunge that is Bena, Minnesota’s Big Fish Supper Club. Reveling in the “pointless disproportion” of these characters/structures, Hirschhorn remarked in a letter to curator Philippe Vergne how he loved that one could “enter and confront their disproportion”: I love this ‘pragmatic’ dimension. To enter into the sculpture, into the monument, to enter into the publicity, into an image. To enter the contents, I love that you can enter its meaning. […]
Pingback by Visual Arts » The Road-Side Giant Book Project — 11/21/2006 @ 4:30 pm
[…] • Top ten to remember: We lost many great creators in ‘06. Let’s not forget them: artist Nam June Paik, reggae/ska legend Desmond Dekker, Egyptian novelist/Nobel prizewinner Mahfouz Naguib, filmmaker Robert Altman, Aeron chair designer Bill Stumpf, installation artist Jason Rhoades, • Favorite Walker acquisition: Dr. Lakra’s flash art Actually acquired in 2005, I learned of our acquisition of seven works on paper by Mexican artist Dr. Lakra from Tyler Green’s blog. Amid our excellent collection of Minimalist works, our wonderful cache of Beuys multiples, and every one of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster films, it’s great to see the earthy, carnivalesque work of this Mexico City-based artist. • Favorite single artwork: Thomas Hirschhorn’s Cavemanman When I met Hirschhorn during the installation of our show Heart of Darkness, I had the gall to tell him I didn’t get his work, especially the huge Swiss Army knife made of cardboard, tape, aluminum foil, and cellophane he showed here in 1998. But walking through the shiny and claustrophobic tunnels of Cavemanman, I was moved by the over-the-top-ness of it and the germaneness of it to current events. Discussing the project with him only underscored my change of, ahem, heart.• Favorite bumpersticker: “Think About Honking If You (Heart) Conceptual Art” […]
Pingback by Off Center » Ten Top Tens — 1/2/2007 @ 1:48 pm
[…] the original Hirschhorn interview, conducted in October 2006 inside his Cavemanman, a cave in the Walker galleries constructed from cardboard, packing tape, aluminum foil, and other […]
Pingback by Off Center » Hirschhorn's Beauty: Interview in PSWAR book — 9/25/2007 @ 3:50 pm
[…] the Walker is Content Paradise. Where else can I say that I’ve interviewed a Swiss guy in a cardboard cave, a taxidermist charged with conserving a fake elephant, a herpetologist overseeing a reptilian […]
Pingback by Off Center » Walker Top Tens of 2007, part three — 1/10/2008 @ 1:44 pm