Thomas Hirschhorn’s large-scale installation Concordia, Concordia recreates the interior of the Costa Concordia, a cruise ship which ran aground and sank off the coast of Italy last January.

The disorienting installation turns floors into walls, walls into ceilings, and ceilings into huge piles of furniture, debris, and lifejackets. This disaster replica, what Hirschhorn calls an “ultimate expression of the precarious, which nobody wants to confront,” captures both past and present tragedy: the impending doom of the wreckage, as well as the the aftermath of evidenced failure.

Known to use everyday objects such as foil, duct tape, bubble wrap, and sometimes doll parts, Hirschhorn’s hypersaturated installations have appeared in the 2011 Venice Biennale, Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany, and a solo show at the Pompidou Center in Paris. He is the recipient of the Marcel Duchamp prize and the Joseph Beuys prize.

WHERE TO SEE IT
Concordia, Concordia is on view at Gladstone Gallery through October 20. Concurrently at Dia: Chelsea, Timeline: Work in Public Space chronicles Hirschhorn’s public interventions in anticipation of his upcoming Gramsci Monument, the fourth part of his Monument series. The Gramsci Monument goes on view in summer 2013.