Boltanski’s characteristically memorial artworks deal in the inhuman substrates of paper and ink, registries and filing cabinets that make up the vast archive of modern life. His Borgesian approach lends itself to the codex, the box, and the printed multiple of which these are rare examples. In working primarily with typescript and photograph—two bureaucratic functionaries par excellence—Boltanski resists their amnesiac banality and instead makes apparent what would otherwise be erased or consigned to a storeroom/archive. See for instance, Les Inhabitants de Malmö, which reproduces the 1993 phonebook for Malmö, Sweden but with an insert listing all the residents who died that same year.

This Table includes a selection of titles from the artist dating back to the mid-Seventies, as well as his edition for Parkett No. 22