Christian Boltanski was born on September 6th, 1944 in Paris, son of a Christian mother and a Jewish father, living the end of the II World War and its consequences directly, which will mark his work completely. Although the artist has freely moved by the art world, developing himself in fields such as photography, film or sculpture, what have made him globally known are his art installations, and 7 of these can be visited until November at the Institut Valencià d'Art Modern in Valencia.

Last July 5th, the exhibition Boltanski. Départ-Arrivée. opened., curated by the director of Intitut Valencià d'Art Modern [IVAM] José Miguel G. Cortés, and Boltanski himself, who was awarded with the XIV Julio Gonzalez International Prize. Two of the exhibition’s pieces - La Traversée de la vie (2015) and Départ - Arrivée (2015), which gives the name to it - are exhibited for the first time in our country. Boltanski's work is present in the collections of the greatest museums around the world, and it focuses on issues such as the passage of time, memory, the human being fragility or death.

"The older we are, the greater the impression of walking on a minefield. Friends blow up around us and tomorrow, perhaps, it’s our turn."

This Christian Boltanski’s phrase (Paris, 1944) refers clearly the big issues passing through their works and installations and marking his artistic career. Memory, loss and death are the main concepts - almost obsessions - in Boltanski's work. As well as his backs into oblivion, forgetfulness, chance and the almost nonexistent trace any life leaves after disappearing. What evoked the disappearance of childhood, the death of their parents or collective death in other stages of his career, now it’s focused on its own end.

All these aspects are reflected and analyzed in the Christian Boltanski’s exhibition, held on the occasion of the awarding of the 2014 Julio Gonzalez International Prize, who has 7 large installations distributed by the IVAM gallery 1.

When we see a work of Christian Boltanski we cannot avoid to ”react" because the common experience of losing a family member or a loved one creates a gap in our lives that sometimes is  hastily and incompletely replaced, when we find an old photo that was totally forgotten, for example. That value of images permeates the artistic work of this author, becoming an engine that brings out hidden or semi-forgotten sensations. In this sense, the French artist has expressed in various ways their interest in the individualized memory, small examples that cause a reaction in the collective: "I'm interested in the little stories of individuals who are not famous," and on another occasion: "We must speak in a sufficiently general way so that everyone can regain some of its own past, its own culture, their own desires".

The exhibition is completed with a free publication produced as a newspaper; a way that - material and conceptually - refers to periodicity, time and physical deterioration.
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Christian Boltanski (Paris, September 6, 1944) is a French sculptor, photographer, painter and film maker, most well known for his photography installations and contemporary French Conceptual style. Boltanski began creating art in the late 1950s, but didn't rise to prominence until almost a decade later through a few short, avante-garde films and some published notebooks in which he referenced his childhood.

In 1986, Boltanski began creating mixed media/materials installations with light as essential concept. Tin boxes, altar-like construction of framed and manipulated photographs (e.g. Chases School, 1986–1987), photographs of Jewish schoolchildren taken in Vienna in 1931, used as a forceful reminder of mass murder of Jews by the Nazis, all those elements and materials used in his work are used in order to represent deep contemplation regarding reconstruction of past. While creating Reserve (exhibition at Basel, Museum Gegenwartskunst, 1989), Boltanski filled rooms and corridors with worn clothing items as a way of inciting profound sensation of human tragedy at concentration camps. As in his previous works, objects serve as relentless reminders of human experience and suffering. His piece, Monument (Odessa), uses six photographs of Jewish students in 1939 and lights to resemble Yahrzeit candles to honor and remember the dead. "My work is about the fact of dying, but it's not about the Holocaust itself."

Additionally, his enormous installation titled "No Man's Land" (2010) at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, is a great example of how his constructions and installations trace the lives of the lost and forgotten.

Christian Boltanski has participated in over 150 art exhibitions throughout the world.[7] Among others, he had solo exhibitions at the New Museum (1988), the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Magasin 3 in Stockholm, the La Maison Rouge gallery, Institut Mathildenhöhe, the Kewenig Galerie, The Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme and many others. From 1 July to 25 September 2011, museum Es Baluard (Mallorca, Spain) exhibited "Signatures", the installation Christian Boltanski conceived specifically for Es Baluard and which is focused on the memory of the workers who in the 17th Century built the museum's walls.

In 2002, Boltanski made the installation "Totentanz II", a Shadow Installation with copper figures, for the underground Centre for International Light Art (CILA) in Unna, Germany.
Prizes

    2007 billionéateurs sans frontières award for visual arts by Cultures France
    2007 Praemium Imperiale Award by the Japan Art Association[8]
    2001 Goslarer Kaiserring, Goslar, Germany[8]
    2001 Kunstpreis, given by Nord/LB, Braunschweig, Germany[8]
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