Thomas Hirschhorn is known for working with an expanded idea of sculpture that operates in a variety of social spaces, including the gallery, the museum, the street, or specific urban communities. Abstract Relief: Archaeology appears at once to be a comment on the aesthetic history of painting, a quasi-abstract map, or a viral cell that points toward the fraught interconnectivity of things. Its components are inexpensive packaging materials, which facilitate the endless circulation of commodities across the globe, and images that simultaneously evoke death, antiquity, and commerce. This approach is in keeping with his tendency toward confrontational juxtapositions of radically antagonistic histories, images, and forms.