Courtesy Monumenta 2010

Christian Boltanski will represent France at the 2011 Venice Biennale. This month he opens a show at the Grand Palais in Paris.

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Boltanski, 65, is best known for his sprawling, haunting installations of photographs of children, which are often displayed in dimly lit rooms and sometimes interpreted as explorations of memory, loss, and the Holocaust. He has also worked in painting and sculpture. The details of his exhibition have not yet been released.

The artist has a busy year planned. He will open a show at the Grand Palais in Paris on Jan. 13 and another exhibition two days later at the MAC/VAL de Vitry-sur-Seine.

A showcase at the Biennale is generally considered one of the highlights of any artistic career, though Boltanski has famously expressed doubts about the importance of leaving a legacy, once telling an interviewer, “We are a subject one day, with our vanities, our loves, our worries, and then one day, abruptly, we become nothing but an object, an absolutely disgusting pile of shit.”