Christian Boltanski

I have always been inspired by Christian Boltanski, his work is mainly focused on life, memories and death. I visited his exhibition in the Grande Palais, Paris in 2010. The exhibition consisted of a large pile of clothes surrounded by several other square sections of neatly placed clothes. The room was filled with a overpowering, thumping heart beat that echoed around the vast space within the Grande Palais. As I sat and watched the giant red piece of machinery creep down and pick up the selected pile of clothes and then just drop them back down again, i began to think about human life and death, it was a very moving piece as i looked at the clothes in the pile as representing life and each item represented a person. As i walked around the space i noticed that the square sections had there own individual heartbeat again representing human presence, the idea that this is someone, although the person is not there in physical form, they are there in different ways.