Sarah Mayhew-Craddock finds a 1970s art experiment immersive

If you find yourself in town with ten minutes to spare, step inside the Christian Boltanski exhibition in the Project Room at Modern Art Oxford and immerse yourself in a reflection of yourself through another man’s life.

In 1973 the French cross-disciplinary artist Christian Boltanski (born in 1944) wrote to the Museum of Modern Art Oxford — now Modern Art Oxford — proposing to classify and display the possessions of a typical local resident.

Museum director Peter Ibsen was intrigued by the concept of an exhibition of photographs by which to “read” oneself through another. He replied proposing an exhibition documenting the belongings of an unknown Oxford undergraduate, a male student at Christ Church.

Shedding light on the curatorial process, the correspondence between artist and curator from conception to execution is displayed as part of this exhibition, Inventory of Objects Belonging to a Young Man of Oxford.

Boltanski was developing a reputation for exploring forms of remembering and consciousness through his work in the 1970s.

He was also moving away from painting, from the short avant-garde films that had catapulted him to public attention in the late 1960s, and from the publication of notebooks (in which he came to terms with his childhood).

However, it is easy to identify the journey towards the analytical, documentary, reflective nature of the work currently on display at Modern Art Oxford in the artist’s earlier work, and indeed the development towards the work that he went on to make photographing found objects.

In 2007 Boltanski remarked: “The ‘Inventories’ say nothing about anyone.

“Their only interest is that anyone who looks at them sees his or her own portrait in them.”

I wonder if Boltanski was influenced by the French philosopher Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory of the Mirror Stage or la stade du miroir, developed in the 1950s, which, amongst other things, explores the relationship between the imaginary and the real, and ideas of duality, ego (via the process of identification) and similarities.

Either way, I cannot help but feel that Ibsen’s suggestion of subject (the Oxford undergraduate) was particularly sagacious in quietly highlighting similarities between, and in turn potentially bridging, Town and Gown.

But this piece of work was part of a bigger, more universal, picture and parallel Boltanski was trying to paint.

He wrote to 62 museums of art, history and anthropology to propose an Inventory project and exhibition.

Five projects, at Staatliche Kunsthalle (Baden Baden), Israel Museum (Jerusalem), Louisiana Museum (Denmark), and Centre National d’Art Contemporain (Paris), as well as the Oxford exhibition, were realised between 1973 and 1974, and all were executed by correspondence.

For the Oxford exhibition, Ibsen took “and made no apology for” the photographs, following Boltanski's instructions.

This was a new way of working, and demonstrates early conceptual art. It was part of an exciting venture for the Museum of Modern Art Oxford, as visionary under Ibsen then as Modern Art Oxford is now under Paul Hobson.

Inventory of Objects Belonging to a Young Man of Oxford is part of a series of exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford that revisits moments from the gallery’s history in the lead up to its 50th anniversary in 2016.

Christian Boltanski Inventory of Objects Belonging to a Young Man of Oxford
Modern Art Oxford
Until February 22
Tickets: Call 01865 722733 or visit modernartoxford.co.uk