Mario Garcia Torres. “Je ne sais si c’en est la cause,” 2009. 59 35mm slides and sound on vinyl record. Courtesy of the artist and Jan Mot, Brussels

“Ruin porn” is the trend — fed in part by the recession — in which decaying, abandoned buildings have become a popular photographic subject, not just for architectural studies, but for fashion shoots. The latest installation of the Hirshhorn’s Directions series focuses on the work of two artists whose work “explores the ruins of the 20th century.” But the work of Mario Garcia Torres and Cyprien Gaillard is not just ruin porn: their art traffics not only in decaying structures but in obsolescent art forms as well.

Garcia Torres’ site-specific work Je ne sais si c’en est la cause ostensibly exists to document a mosaic by French artist Daniel Buren that was commissioned for the Grape Tree Bay Hotel in Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. This mosaic, informed in part by Buren’s studies with Mexican muralists, was a transition from the figurative painting he had been working in to the abstract minimalism (and flat out conceptualism) he would later embrace. But the work was abandoned, both by commerce and the artist, who disavowed it.