Detail View: Visual Resources Teaching Collection: 1 + 1 + 1

aahi0001167

1 + 1 + 1

installation detail

"Commissioned for "Documenta 8", held in Kassel, Germany, in 1987, 1 + 1 +1 responds to the context of this major international exhibition, long dominated by a European perspective. (...) 1 + 1 + 1 equates the aestheticization of poverty with exploitation. The installation includes one of Jaar's first mature uses of the photographic light box - a glass and metal structure supporting a photographic transparency back-lit by fluorescent tubes - which has become his signature method of presentation. Here, three light boxes are mounted low on the wall; each contains a single black-and-white image of impoverished children standing in a dusty landscape. The photographs are cropped dramatically and presented upside down. (...) Three gilded "fine-art" frames - uniformly sized to fit the three light boxes - are positionend on the floor directly in front of the phtoographs. The left frame is empty, the center frame contains a series of four progressively smaller frames, and the right frame surrounds a mirror. 1 + 1 + 1 challenges the conventional politics of museum or gallery display. (...) The three arrangements of the gilded frame - used here as the iconic representation of an aesthetic experience - offer the art audience three possible ways of looking at "reality". (...) 1 +1 + 1 suggests, in its inconclusiveness, Jaar's ambivalence about art's ability to directly effect the world's most pressing economic and social problems." (James E. Rondeau)

1987

creation

2007-11-28

Alfredo Jaar (Chilean, born 1956)

male

Chilean photographer and installation artist. He first studied architecture at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, then filmmaking at the Instituto Chileno-Norteamericano de Cultura, Santiago, concluding in 1981. Jaar's abiding interest throughout his career has been in the political and economic relationships between the West and the developing world, and he has explored various aspects of this relationship through research-based projects. Over 50 such projects were completed between 1986 and 1996, each culminating in installations that often took the form of photographs mounted on light-boxes; he also used mirrors, grandiose golden picture frames and maps. His preference for a medium more usually associated with corporate advertising in public spaces was heavily tinged with irony, especially given his subject-matter. Gold in the Morning (1986; San Diego, CA, Mus. Contemp. A.) exemplifies his working methods, evolving out of several weeks research in the Amazon rain forest, where Jaar looked at the lives of men foraging for gold in an open mine. He subsequently exhibited backlit photographs of the site and the miners alongside an installation of nails and a golden frame. A series of other installations emerged from this experience, all concerning gold mining, such as Rushes (1986; see 1998 exh cat., vol. 2, pp. 31–5) and Frames of Mind (1987; see 1998 exh. cat., vol. 2, pp. 36–47). While much of his work was exhibited in gallery spaces, he also also often ventured outside: Shelter (Please Close Your Eyes) (1996; see 1998 exh.cat., vol. 2, pp. 307–15), for example, was a series of text-based posters mounted in backlit advertising boards on a bus shelter at the University of Washington; it concerned the work of two writers and a political activist. (Grove Art Online Accessed 2008-02-6)

visiting artist, Visiting Artist Program, 1987

Contemporary

20th century

photographs

sculpture (visual works)

installations (visual works)

photographs

sculptures and installations

light boxes

Museum Fridericianum

exhibition

Kassel, Germany

© Alfredo Jaar

© Alfredo Jaar

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