Thomas Hirschhorn, LAST CHANCE: A Visual Manifesto on Learning from Art

“History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” – Mark Twain

And yet, we never seem to learn. Or worse, we stubbornly refuse to. Wars, genocides, humanitarian crises unfold in a cycle as predictable as it is senseless. In the face of this reality, Thomas Hirschhorn presents a bold and urgent proposition: if political, economic, and social history has failed to teach us anything, perhaps it’s time to learn from Art History. Art as our last chance, to understand, to connect, and maybe even to act.

At Galerie Chantal Crousel, Hirschhorn unveils Art-History-Plaques, a series that is itself a statement. These works resemble military commemorative plaques, objects steeped in memory and rhetoric, but here, bronze and metal give way to raw cardboard and photocopies. A simple yet radical gesture: art doesn’t need monumentality to be powerful.

His plaques feel like something pulled from an Instagram feed, visual collages, layered texts, overlapping images reminiscent of viral posts, yet carrying a depth that mindless scrolling rarely allows. Hirschhorn turns digital aesthetics into something tactile, grounding the fleeting nature of online content in physical reality.

Looking at these works, one can’t help but think of Kurt Schwitters and his Merzbau, those chaotic assemblages of discarded materials. But where Schwitters built absurd architectures, Hirschhorn constructs spaces of meaning, each plaque is a declaration, a form of resistance against collective amnesia.

The question is ambitious: can we truly learn from Art History? Hirschhorn’s answer is an emphatic yes. For him, art is the bridge between past and present, the only tool capable of making sense of what would otherwise remain incomprehensible.

And yet, I can’t help but wonder: if art were truly a key to understanding our times, why does history keep repeating itself? We’ve had Goya’s Disasters of War, Picasso’s Guernica, Anselm Kiefer’s scorched reflections on Nazism. And still, the very conflicts Hirschhorn references, Ukraine, Palestine, Iran, remind us that art, however powerful, has never been enough to change the course of history.

But perhaps Hirschhorn isn’t offering solutions. Maybe he’s simply reminding us that art still exists, as an ultima ratio, a last possible path to understanding, if only we’re willing to truly look.

If there’s one thing Hirschhorn rejects, it’s the idea of neutral art. Every piece he creates is political, a visual outcry that refuses to be merely aesthetic. At a time when even contemporary art risks becoming a luxury commodity, he embraces rough materials, unstable forms, direct messages.

His plaques, with their physical and symbolic weight, push back against the dematerialization of thought. They demand space, visibility, touch. They are an invitation, or perhaps a provocation, to recognize art as something that concerns us all.

LAST CHANCE is a loaded title, almost apocalyptic. But Hirschhorn’s exhibition is anything but a surrender. It’s a stubborn attempt to still believe in art’s power, its ability to link past and present, to generate meaning in a world that increasingly feels devoid of logic.

Maybe we’ll never learn from History. Maybe not even from Art. But if there’s one last chance to make sense of things, Hirschhorn is telling us it’s worth taking.

at Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
November 23, 2024 – January 18, 2025