PHOTO:Andreas Gursky
The Dusseldorf-based photographer Andreas Gursky is considered one of the most important contemporary artists. With an objective and precise eye, he captures the burning issues of modern life and global reality. Each overall composition is a technical and visual masterpiece that has long inscribed itself on the collective visual memory of the art world.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Frieder Burda Museum Archive
In addition to his commitment to colour photography, Gursky’s typical forms of expression are to be found in digital processing and extremely large-scale formats. In the process, his works always bear visual testimony to his decades of travel around the globe. His images always reflect on both the inward and outward appearance of the world. The apparent beauty and perfection of his pictures is deceptive, it is not until after the first glance that it becomes obvious that they conceal the wealth of thought in the depicted. Gursky’s images seduce through that which is portrayed but at the same time, they insist that the viewer think about the reasons behind them. From ancient sites through contemporary scenes and political debates to fictitiously arranged fantasy worlds: Andreas Gursky’s pictures also turn out to be subtle observations of the state of our globalised world. Cairo and the Cheops pyramids, Prada shops, production facilities and garbage dumps, mass spectacles in Pyongyang, or at national church conferences, the subversive demonstration of power structures and global world orders, internationally active stock markets, museums as places of supposed reflection and comic heroes used to portray future worlds. The exhibition in Museum Frieder Burda, allows the viewer to rediscover Gursky’s fascinating cosmos of images in a kind of overview. The exhibition forms an arc between Andreas Gursky’s older, iconic works and his latest and most current visual inventions. This presentation opens up a rich pictorial panorama to the visitor, which simultaneously provides a precise analysis of our complex reality and formulates great joy in the seeing and discovering of picture
Info: Curator: Udo Kittelmann, Museum Frieder Burda, Lichtentaler Allee 8b, Baden-Baden, Duration: 3/10/15-24/1/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.museum-frieder-burda.de
