PHOTO:Andreas Gursky
Andreas Gursky is a observer of our time. He finds his subjects all over the. The artist favours themes of global relevance, such as mass consumption and international stock exchange trading. Only with the arrival of digital photography was the artist able to compose his photographs like a painter, right down to the last detail. While the works always retain their documentary character, the artist’s interventions transform them into a memory of subjectively perceived reality.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Archive
Whereas in the 18th or 19th Centuries it was primarily scenes of uncontrollable forces of nature that evoked experiences of beauty and terror in viewers, Gursky depicts global phenomena of our time that look as if they might get out of hand at any moment. The artist often draws on the visual tradition of the Romantic landscape painters, for example, when he sets miniature human figures into vast landscapes. This visual language has its equivalent in philosophical discussions of the sublime that arose around the same time. An exhibition of new and earlier works by Andreas Gursky are in show at the Gstaad Saanen private airport in Switzerland. Gursky’s large-scale photographs evoke the complexity of global connectedness via the enormous amounts of information that flow through his images like data streams: the chaos of contemporary life competing with the classical desire for order. From threats to the environment to the world’s exploding population and cities, Gursky portrays the extremes of the present moment with a coolly objective eye. His photographs capture built and natural environments on a grand scale, with individual or granular elements whirling into totalities. Though similar in their sweep and scope to early nineteenth-century landscape paintings, his images retain the hard precision of digital photography. Gursky’s works from the early 1990s depict factories, stock exchanges, airports, golf courses, highways, and buildings, often from aerial viewpoints that reveal the patterns of crowds and infrastructure. In 1996 he moved away from this perspective in favor of deadpan frontal views, as in “Gucci” (1996/2016), which displays bags and shoes arranged on brightly lit shelves—a minimalist altar of luxury fashion. As photographic technologies evolved rapidly over the past twenty years, Gursky began digitally manipulating his images, and, correspondingly, creating new methods of production and display. “Qatar” (2012) depicts the interior of a shipping tanker used to transport liquid gas in the Persian Gulf. The massive container was photographed empty while undergoing a routine cleaning, the gleaming golden metal strangely symbolic of the meteoric economic growth of the Arab state. Its opulence evokes fantasies of staggering wealth, while its hermetic closure brings to mind a pharaoh’s tomb. Within the setting, Gursky’s presentation of an anonymous worker performing some unspecified labor suggests a recalibration of the hierarchies of value between human and machine. Locating an abstract composition within a rural landscape, in “Ibiza” (2016) Gursky captures what appears to be the intersection of two country roads. As power lines overlap with a streetlamp, and a bunch of colorful balloons dangles in front of a utility box, the photograph is a reminder of the forms, routes, and objects we live with yet don’t always notice. Similarly, “Tokyo” (2017), that was shot from a bullet train, captures the city’s miniature architecture and the density and irregularity of its buildings, fusing the ceaseless movement of data, people, and mass culture with the stillness of metaphysical reflection.
Info: Tarmak 22, Gstaad Saanen Airport, Oeystrasse 29, Gstaad, Duration: 1/2-17/3/19, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 15:00-19:00, https://gagosian.com
