The work of Thomas Hirschhorn (Bern, 1957) is a politically committed reflection on contemporary reality. Employing a variety of disciplines such as sculpture, video and installation, Hirschhorn produces works charged with social and political criticism.

“The Subjecters” is the title of the exhibition (at La Casa Encendida in Madrid, until 5 January), but also the global term for the pieces the artist has made with mannequins or parts of them. As the artist himself says, “The mannequin (or the parts of mannequins) is not the Subject – it’s a Subjecter. The Subjecter is an invention of mine – it stands for what I cannot give a name but for what I can give form (and must give form, as the artist), and I worked it out with the form of mannequins, which is not new in the history of art, but which is a form to express the ‘closest-far-away of myself.’”

Thomas Hirschhorn has been using mannequins for several years now, regarding them as a material that is “inclusive and non-intimidating, unpretentious and democratic, non- hierarchical and simple”, like the adhesive tapes, tinfoil and magazine clippings that he usually employs in his installations. As he says, there is nothing new about this: Dada and Surrealist artists worked with mannequins back in the Twenties, questioning every convention about art through the use of unusual materials, chaos against order, and the mixture of genres and materials associated with collages. Indeed, Thomas Hirschhorn admires the collages by John Heartfield, Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters and, most particularly, what he regards as a 3D collage, the “Grosses-Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama” collage by the Dada artist Johannes Baader.