Robert Blanchon

Photo-based conceptual artist Robert Blanchon left behind an extensive and varied body of work before his untimely death at the age of 34. This publication is the first comprehensive monograph to document his oeuvre and its place within the context of New York City in the 1990s. Like his contemporaries Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Robert Gober, and Zoe Leonard, Blanchon grappled with the legacies of Minimalism and Modernism, the relation between politics and art, and his identification as a gay, HIV-positive artist who nonetheless eschewed identity politics as the basis of an art practice. Blanchon's decade-long exhibition history is marked by a witty, insightful treatment of loss, memory and morality executed primarily through photography but also extending to video, mail art and performance. This publication includes essays by Gregg Bordowitz and Sasha Archibald; selections of the artist's writings and an annotated checklist of his archive.