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Alfredo Jaar: The Fire This Time - Public Interventions 1979-2005

Alfredo Jaar: The Fire This Time - Public Interventions 1979-2005
Library Shelf Location 18.JAAR
Publication Date 2005
Description Alfredo Jaar's first public intervention was staged in his native Chile in 1979. Called 'Studies on Happiness', it launched a three-year series of performances and exhibitions. Under the circumstances - a cultural community tightly mointored by a brutal military dictatorship - Jaar's wide ranging inquiry into realtive states of happiness was boldly, and hazardously, ironic. But precisely by offering a psychological mirror word to those who (voluntaily) answered the questions it posed, 'Studies on Happiness' anticipted a working method that Jaar has followed ever since. Developed slowly in response to particular situations and only in retrospect revealing continuties of striking durability, Jaar's vocabulary relies in large part on stratedgies of reversal. He inclines toward inversions of all kinds, and particularly favours reflective surfaces, especially where images or windows are expected. As often as not in his work, light blinds, and darkness reveals. An architect interested in ephemeral structures, a photographer who has grown increasingly suspicious of pictures, Jaar's most telling gesture is to relinquish the camera by placing it, figuratively and sometimes, literally, in the publics hands. In other words, Jaar is a master of indirection. And no wonder. His work was shaped at the outset by the need to speak clearly and forcefully against murderous injustice, using language of the most lucid obliquity.
ISBN 8881585308
Quantity 1
Pages 150
Author Nancy Princenthal
Format Paperback
Publisher Edizioni Charta, Milano
Related Artist Alfredo Jaar
Categories Photography, Artist (relating to a single artist/collaborative team)
Language English

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