THOMAS HIRSCHHORN-PHAIDON

The work of Paris-based Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn (b.1957) comprises giant, labour-intensive, room-sized collages of low-grade materials - that is to say, rubbish. Hirschhorn is among the most significant artists to have emerged internationally in the 1990s. His work has been included in the world's top exhibitions (including Documenta 11, 2003, and the 48th Venice Biennale, 1999), and he was recipient of the prestigious Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2001. Hirschhorn's work, a commentary on the spectacle of late-capitalist consumerism, is characterized by collages of tinfoil, cardboard, plywood, plastic and packing tape combined with an infinite variety of debris: handwritten texts and images culled from popular magazines, miniature toy airplanes and trains, knick-knacks by the hundreds, armies of plastic 'gold' watches, effigies of Nietzsche and Princess Diana, monitors duct-taped into vitrines, and so on.