Thomas Hirschhorn, World Airport, 2002
Installation photograph of exhibition at The Renaissance Society
Transition. Simulacra. Dialogue.
Still beaming from Hirschhorn's previous work, World Laundromat, the fluorescent tubes in World Airport glow and buzz in sync with the fluorescent lights above on the ceiling of Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. The parallels and overlaps between the clinical white cube of art exhibition space and the sterility of public transitional space are addressed again-last time commercial; this time commercial, industrial, political, and international. The place for art in public spaces is made ironical as local spectators think back to Michael Hayden's blinking, neon, ceiling sculpture, Thinking Lightly, located in the United Airlines terminal at Chicago's O'Hare airport.
I see.
Under the publicity of white fluorescent light, Hirschhorn's use of cellophane
creates a crumbled clarity that glitters and obscures like tears blurring
one's vision as it glitters in the eyes as one aboards a plane.