Thomas Hirschhorn, *Pixel-Collage n°97.*

Musée Magazine: In Pixel Collage you juxtapose abstract images with the stark reality of death and violence. Can you tell us about the evolution of this project?

Thomas Hirschhorn: Nothing is un-showable. The only thing that cannot be shown is that which has no form. Everything in our world that has form is able to be shown and viewed. In order to confront the world, to struggle with it, with its chaos, its hyper-complexity, its incommensurability, I need to confront reality without distance. I wanted to do an artwork today, in contact with complexity, in contact with reality, in contact with the time we are living in and in contact with the world. This has always been my engagement and my position.

Musée: Images of destructed human bodies are a recurring theme in your work. We saw them in Abstract Resistance (2006) as well as in your more recent Pixel Collage. How has your relationship with these images changed and developed over the last decade?

Thomas: More than ever - as an artist - I need to face the world in it’s reality, step into the hardcore reality. I don’t think in terms of ‘decades’ - I think in terms of the ‘here’ and the ‘now.’ This is the case in the Pixel-Collage, as well as in all of my work. The exhibition at Gladstone Gallery will mark the ending of the Pixel-Collage series that I have been working on for the past two years. My engagement with the problematic nature of “pixilation” and “de-pixilation” comes from the decision to see and look at the world as it is, and to insist upon this. Pixilation, blurring, or masking, and furthermore censorship or self-censorship, is a growing and insidious issue, especially in social media today. I don’t accept that, under the claim of protecting---protecting me, protecting the other---the world is pixelated in my place. De-pixilation is the term I use to manifest that pixelating no longer makes sense. Pixels, blurring, masking, and censorship in general can no longer conceal fake-news, facts, opinions, or comments. These all entirely take part in the “Post-Truth.” We have definitely entered the post-truth world. Pixilation stands for the form of agreement in this post-truth world.