From Booklist
The term installation art describes a diverse array of provocative artworks that bring viewers inside an artist's creation rather than allowing them to stand passively before a static image. Artists' installations feature intense sensory experiences that go beyond the visual and incorporate a vast range of materials and media from household objects to mist to chain saws to naked people to state-of-the-art computer imaging and sound technologies. As de Oliveira and his contributors explain in this exciting international survey, an ever-increasing number of contemporary artists are creating environments that resemble everything from a living room to a library, theater, or hospital in order to explore the nature of time and memory, the relationship between body and mind, ecological concerns, the distinction between private and public space, and the implications of the digital explosion. As documented in this worthy volume's 268 colorplates and definitive commentary, the resulting installations vary from stunning to silly, frightening to pleasurable, futuristic to funky, but all are mind expanding and all extend art's capacity for reflecting and influencing our lives. Donna Seaman
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Booklist
[A] worthy volume....definitive commentary.

Book Description
"Wonderfully illustrated and wide-ranging...does an excellent job of showing the charged, dynamic conversation taking place between artist and audience." —Library Journal Over the past decade Installation art has achieved mainstream status within contemporary visual culture. Its ascendancy has given rise to new terms and affected not just art but also fashion, movie design, and club culture. The new "immersive" Installation reflects a desire for sensual pleasure, as the viewer is totally enveloped in a hermetic and narcissistic artwork, as illustrated by the American artist Doug Aitken and the Japanese artist Kazuo Katase, among others. New dynamics have developed between the artist and institutions, and Installation is more than ever an open-ended experiment that transforms the museum into a cultural laboratory, as seen in the work of Hans Haacke. Installation refuses to accept fixed boundaries, and practitioners, such as the Mexican Jose Dávila, are now looking to forge relationships of exchange on a global level, collaborating with specialists in other non-art areas. In a rapidly changing world, time and memory become key concerns, and artists such as Christian Boltanksi and Damien Hirst prefer to construct their own spaces of memory. The culmination of these processes has made the audience itself the key site of the Installation, as witnessed in the works of Vanessa Beecroft, Gary Hill, Mariko Mori, and Bill Viola. Introduced by Jonathan Crary, Professor of Art History, Columbia University, the book is completed by a chronology, details on the works included in the book, further reading, and an index. 317 illustrations, 268 in color.

About the Author
Directors of the Museum of Installation in London, Nicolas de Oliveira, Nicola Oxley, and Michael Petry have—as critics, teachers, exhibition organizers, and artists—pioneered the systematic study of Installation art.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Over the past decade Installation art has achieved mainstream status within contemporary visual culture. Its ascendancy has given rise to new terms and affected not just art but also fashion, movie design, and club culture.

The new "immersive" Installation reflects a desire for sensual pleasure, as the viewer is totally enveloped in a hermetic and narcissistic artwork, as illustrated by the American artist Doug Aitken and the Japanese artist Kazuo Katase, among others. New dynamics have developed between the artist and institutions, and Installation is more than ever an open-ended experiment that transforms the museum into a cultural laboratory, as seen in the work of Hans Haacke. Installation refuses to accept fixed boundaries, and practitioners, such as the Mexican Jose Dávila, are now looking to forge relationships of exchange on a global level, collaborating with specialists in other non-art areas. In a rapidly changing world, time and memory become key concerns, and artists such as Christian Boltanksi and Damien Hirst prefer to construct their own spaces of memory. The culmination of these processes has made the audience itself the key site of the Installation, as witnessed in the works of Vanessa Beecroft, Gary Hill, Mariko Mori, and Bill Viola.

Introduced by Jonathan Crary, Professor of Art History, Columbia University, the book is completed by a chronology, details on the works included in the book, further reading, and an index. 317 illustrations, 268 in color.