Monday, November 14, 2016

Christian Boltanski | El Caso











Christian Boltanski
El Caso
Zürich, Switzerland: Parkett, 1989
[18 pp.], 5 x 8 x 0.6 cm., ringbound
Edition of 100 signed and numbered copies

Produced as an edition for the 22nd issue of Parkett magazine, El Caso features images of victims of brutally violent crime. Boltanski rephotographed the corpses from Spanish detective magazine El Caso. The glossy photos and the perspex cover are held together with two metal rings. The work is signed and numbered in pencil on the last page, out of 80 (an additional 20 copies were numbered in Roman numerals).


"Luxury edition of a booklet with real glossy photographs, small enough to be hidden behind the hand... It pictures the bodies of victims of violent crime. By showing these photographs of half-naked corpses, bought nearer by close-up shots, the artist transforms the viewer into a voyeur who virtually becomes a sadistic partner in the crime."
- Catalogue: Books, Printed Matter, Ephemera 1966-1991.

“There is in the work of the artist something of the high priest and something of the charlatan. Boltanski transforms shards of nothing into art, bits of cardboard, lumps of sugar, old photos, but plays the game of showing us that his transformation is also mere illusion, that this art is also the nothing or next to nothing from which it has sprung.”
- Didier Semin 


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