ANDREAS GURSKY
Born in Leipzig (GE) in 1955, Gursky studied under Michael Schmidt at the Folkwang University of the Arts (Essen) and graduated in 1980. Until 1987, he studied under Bernd Becher and Kasper König at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and completed his master’s degree under Becher in 1985. He served as a professor at Düsseldorf Art Academy from 2010 to 2018. Gursky is considered part of the first generation of the “Becher School”, known as the most important school of thought in contemporary photography. As they have been described as a school that puts typology in photography into practice, Gursky also creates an underlying theme following the types of phenomena in a naturalistic way. At the same time, he introduced a transcendental spectacle into photographic expression through techniques such as digital photographic composition and processing. His major solo exhibitions were held at Fondazione MAST (Bologna, 2023), Amorepacific Museum of Art (Seoul, 2022), Museum der bildenden Künste (2021), Kunstmuseum Basel (2018) and The National Art Center, Tokyo / The National Museum of Art, Osaka (2013-2014), etc. Gursky also has held large-scale retrospectives at museums such as Haus der Kunst (Munich), Istanbul Modern, Sharjah Art Museum, National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, 2007-2008), and at MoMA (NY), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2001-2002). His works are in the collection of major contemporary art museums and institutes around the world. In 2011, “Rhein II” (1999) was sold at Christie’s (NY) for $4.3M, setting a record for the world’s highest bid for a living photographer’s work.
-
Title: Bangkok IX
Year: 2011
Medium: inkjet print, in artist's frame
Dimensions: 307 x 221 cm (120 7/8 x 87 in.)
-
Bangkok IX
-
Year: 2011Gursky visited Bangkok in the spring of 2011 and photographed the Chao Phraya River. Flowing calmly amidst the bustling metropolis, this river has historically and geopolitically been a part of Thailand’s bloodline. Unlike the picturesque beauty of the Rhine River which he had previously photographed, the Chao Phraya River is also an important river transport route dotted with Fuel oil and waste, presenting a landscape that fascinated Gursky so much. Without knowing the background of the work, one’s attention would be drawn to the strong verticality of the black and white before recognizing the figurative nature that this is “a photograph of a river.” It is reminiscent of Barnett Newman’s “The Stations of the Cross” and “Zip.” The work regains its figurativeness when the viewer gets closer to the work and sees the drifting objects and the river surface in detail. However, there are no traces of people or streets of Bangkok, only trash which could be found in any river, with dull sky reflected on the water surface. On the large picture plane which extends beyond the viewer’s sight, the black shadows extending straight in parallel strip away the sense of distance, a view one would never encounter in reality. It appears as if a small portion of the river surface captured from a transcendental and wide perspective has been magnified. Gursky manipulates photographs and “creates” intentional images by erasing or altering things that are supposed to be present. Thus, this work is also a constructed image. If Gursky is aiming for “abstraction” in this work, part of his thinking must have been to abstract a more universal concept of “river” and its “problem” from the strong specificity of “Chao Phraya River in Bangkok”. Pollution of rivers is not unique to Bangkok. By sublimating the uneven ugliness into universal beauty as an image, the viewer is prompted to contemplate the abstracted elements. In Gursky’s works, while the images may not always reveal the correct reality, they tell beyond the truth by overlapping reality and fiction.
Medium: inkjet print, in artist's frame
Dimensions: 307 x 221 cm (120 7/8 x 87 in.)
Edition: No. 1 of 6
Acquired from Sotheby's, 2023
Courtesy of Sotheby's