...
On the ground floor of the museum Jaar has suspended five light boxes over three long rows of water-filled 55-gallon black steel drums. The lighted images are reflected in the still water, rippling in small waves when passersby brush against the drums. To see the reflections, one must bend and stretch over the barrels. Jaar hopes the physical engagement achieves one of his goals for the show: shaking viewers’ complacency with images. He believes photographs and news reports on world disasters proliferate so widely and pass by so quickly that we can no longer process them. When a catastrophe strikes it is encapsulated in the news with hundreds of other stories and the gravity of all the news is lost. Jaar has a reasonable complaint, but his work does not articulate it. Rather than creating empathy for his suffering subjects, his installation seduces with the calm quiet of the black drums and the tranquillity of the floating images. One does not see horror in the barrels, one sees light. The artist has made his complaint too theoretical, made the wrong too obscure.
...

Ted C. Fishman "Alfredo Jaar: Geography War", In: Chicago Reader, Arts & Culture, 14.05.1992,
Text ist nur auf Englisch verfügbar https://chicagoreader.com/arts-culture/alfredo-jaar-geography-war/ (09.03.2022)