“If you work as an artist, you destroy yourself. The more you work, the less you exist. It seems awful, but it can also be a good thing, since it’s easier to make art than to live.” That’s the French mixed-media artist Christian Boltanski, for whom the precarity of life is a central theme in work that ranges from sculptures to digital installations to immersive combinations of many mediums. This exhibition—the first in his home country since a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou last year—continues to explore the line between life and death in a multi-floor installation that combines video and sculpture. Projections of children’s faces appear at first legible before flickering into blurry visions; trolley carts covered in white cloths conjure the dead lost to the pandemic. Alongside new works such as these, two of Boltanski’s most famous large-scale projects demonstrate his continuing interest in the human condition. —C.J.F.

Christian Boltanski: Après
Marian Goodman Gallery
79 Rue du Temple, 75003 Paris, France
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