Lothar Baumgarten: Air

One of the art world's leading figures for more than three decades, the German installation artist Lothar Baumgarten is known for his subtle cultural critique. His often site-specific installations reflect his interest in ethnographic layers and historical circumstances. For example, in 1978 he lived for a year with an Indian tribe in Venezuela, and during a long spell of illness--he caught two different but equally dispiriting forms of malaria--he taught himself the printed history of the area in its every detail. In Air, Baumgarten assembles a series of impressive black-and-white photographs of Venetian chimneys, which have distinguished the Venice skyline since the Middle Ages.