Kader Attia: New Work
STROUM GALLERY
February 29 – May 25, 2008






Kader Attia. Ghost. 2008. Aluminum foil.
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Christian Nagel (Cologne/Berlin).
Photo: Richard Nicol.


The Henry Art Gallery presents an exhibition of installations and new video works by French-Algerian artist Kader Attia, his first large-scale solo exhibition in the U.S.

Attia, born in 1970 to a Muslim family of Algerian origin, grew up in the outskirts of Paris in a largely immigrant-populated area. The impact of the environment in which Attia grew up permeates much of the artist’s works. His early work captured identity and gender issues in Muslim immigrant populations living in a French consumerist society. Attia’s recent projects have turned darker and more intimate, presenting an apocalyptic outlook on the suburban landscape of today. His recent installations move away from explicit narratives to explore the affect of architectural style and scale.




Kader Attia. Rochers Carrés. 2008. Plywood and sheetrock.
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Christian Nagel (Cologne/Berlin).
Photo: Richard Nicol


Attia was in residence at the Henry Art Gallery for a month to produce new work for the exhibition. The central installation, Rocher Carré, based on a composition Attia has in the past painted directly on walls, realizes a sculpture of this subject for the first time. The formal beauty of his installations provokes a psychological proximity that helps visitors explore the relationship between volume and emptiness, dream and reality, wealth and poverty, power and weakness.

Also included is a large-scale version of Ghost, an installation the artist has presented at Galerie Christian Nagel, Berlin, and the Haifa Museum, Israel. Ghost presents a haunting assemblage of scores of hooded women made of aluminum foil, seated in prayer, and without faces, stripped of their identity. The Henry is the first venue to host these significant new site-specific installations and drawings.