GURSKY, Andreas - Catalogue Baden-Baden

Background information

"He is considered one of the most important contemporary artists: the Düsseldorf photographer Andreas GURSKY. Objectively and precisely he captures the focal points of modern life worlds and global reality. Every composition is a technical and pictorial masterpiece and has long been inscribed in the collective visual memory of the art world. The digital image processing and the extreme large format are in addition to the dedicated color photography its characteristic means of expression. Andreas GURSKY's works are also always pictorial witnesses to his decades of traveling around the world. Behind his paintings hides an imaginary map that traces the artist's itinerary. Hardly any artist of our time pursued such a consistent travel activity, and it turns out increasingly that GURSKY has always had an accurate description of the world, its construction and constitution in mind. His pictures are always reflections on the outer and the inner appearance of the world. The apparent beauty and perfection of his pictures is deceptive, but is hidden behind them, so to speak, after a first inspection, the rich space of thought of what is shown. GURSKY's images seduce through what is shown, but at the same time they are given the insistent request to think about the reason for the images. From ancient sites to current scenes of social and political foci to fictitiously arranged fantasy worlds: Andreas GURSKY's images always turn out to be subtle reflections on the state of our globalized world. Cairo and the Pyramid of Cheops, Prada Shops and Toys'R'Us, production plants and garbage dumps, mass spectacles in the North Korean Pyongyang or on the occasion of Kirchentag, the subversive demonstration of power structures and global world orders, the international stock exchanges, museums as places supposedly Reflection and comic heroes for the imagination of future worlds - all this is part of the repertoire of his compositions. The exhibition at the Museum Frieder Burda, which is being developed in close collaboration with the artist, enables us to experience the fascinating cosmos of Andreas GURSKY in a kind of overview exhibition. The strict 'being integrated' of these images, which serve our ideas and imaginations of the world, can be questioned and explored. The exhibition curated by Udo Kittelmann for the Museum Frieder Burda spans the arc from the older iconic works of Andreas GURSKY to his most recent and current pictorial inventions. This presentation opens up a picture-rich panorama to the visitor, which on the one hand precisely analyzes our complex reality and on the other hand expresses a great desire to see and discover pictures.

Content

This publication, which is part of the Andreas-Gursky-exhibition, addresses the selection of images made for the exhibition in Baden-Baden and their artistic and curatorial approach to exemplary dialogues of image and text. The moment inherent in the images of Andreas GURSKY for the construction and reconstruction of reality finds in the catalog a dialogical correspondence through the selection of editorial texts from the national and international daily press made by the curator of the exhibition." (© Burda Museum)

About the German photographer, Andreas GURSKY (b. 1955, in Leipzig)

Photo books by and on the work of Andreas GURSKY