Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
"Regardless of whether he explores work or leisure, factory farming or spectacular events, super-market products or rubbish tops, every single exposure in Gursky's encyclopedic morphology is a vital piece in the puzzle, which over some twenty-eight years has resulted in a sweeping view of the global world made up of compacted testimonies each to a particular instant in time. It is this that makes him stand out so as a photographic artist." Martin Hentschel, excerpted from the foreword to Andreas Gursky: Works 80-08.
Published by Steidl/Hayward Gallery Publishing. Text by Ralph Rugoff, Gerald Schröder, Brian Sholis. Interview by Jeff Wall.
Andreas Gursky has been widely celebrated for his monumental, extraordinarily detailed pictures, often exploring contemporary global themes. This comprehensive book takes a fresh look at the artist’s iconic images from the past four decades.
In a landmark conversation between two of the most significant figures in contemporary photography, Gursky talks to Jeff Wall about the sources for his photographic vision, while an essay by Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff explores important but often neglected areas of the artist’s work. Essays by art historian Gerald Schröder and writer-curator Brian Sholis provide new insight into key pictures, and artist Katharina Fritsch offers personal snapshots of her Düsseldorf colleague, creating a portrait of the artist in the round. Presenting the artist’s best-known works—including “Paris, Montparnasse” (1993), “99 Cent” (2001) and “Chicago Board of Trade III” (2009)—as well as new, previously unpublished photographs, this is an indispensable survey of 40 years of work from one of the world’s most influential artists.
Regarded as one of the most important photographers of our time, Andreas Gursky (born 1955) is known for his large-scale, often spectacular pictures that portray emblematic sites and scenes of the global economy and contemporary life. From the work of the late 1980s, produced after Gursky had graduated from Bernd Becher’s class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, through to his most recent photographs which continue to push the boundaries of the medium, Gursky’s art has been driven by an interest in forms of collective existence. This includes depictions of massive man-made structures and huge gatherings of people in nightclubs, factories, arenas and vast landscapes, which together provide a sweeping visual record of our age. Steidl has published Gursky’s Andreas Gursky (2015) and Bangkok (2012).
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Frederik Stjernfelt, Poul Erik Tøjner.
Andreas Gursky (born 1955) is one of the most celebrated living photographers. His images of contemporary culture's excesses and sublimities rival the greatest history paintings for size and narrative richness; more than any of his contemporaries, Gursky has amply fulfilled what Samuel Beckett once declared the task of the artist to be: "to find a form to accommodate the mess." His epic photographs enumerate with relentless acuity the proliferation of goods and commodities in our era-perhaps mostly famously in his 99-cent series of photographs of the endless aisles of American 99-cent stores. In the 1990s, Gursky began to use digital technology to intensify this acuity, compelling every inch of the visual data in his photographs to an almost unbearable pitch of equivalence and detail. This volume offers a new overview of Gursky's career, featuring both classic series and his most recent bodies of work. Included here in full color are such iconic images as the 99-cent stores; the Formula 1 racetracks of Bahrain; the Tokyo and Chicago stock exchanges; the subterranean locker rooms of German miners; as well as his newest photographs, such as the Ocean series (2010) and his shots of a fashion show by designers Viktor and Rolf (2011).
Andreas Gursky's Bangkok series depicts the dark, moving waters of Thailand's Chao Phraya river, whose shimmering surface possesses the qualities of abstract painting. Indeed these photos are reminiscent of the work of modernist abstractionists such as Hans Arp, but they also echo the patterns of military camouflage. Seductively beautiful at first glance, it is only slowly that the detritus of civilization floating on the surface of the river becomes recognizable--the evidence of an ominous, threatening reality moving across colorful reflections. Gursky thus alludes to the ecological problems that jeopardize Bangkok, which, shortly after these images were made, contributed to the widespread flooding that devastated many areas in Thailand.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited and text by Martin Hentschel.
Andreas Gursky (born 1955) has ranked for many years among the world’s leading photographic artists. First published in 2008 and quickly going out of print, Works 80–08 unfurls the artist’s oeuvre in all its encyclopedic glory. Gursky selected over 150 images from his archive of photographs especially for this publication, reaching back in time to his student days at the Folkwang Hochschule Essen, and then to his formative studies with Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Beginning with the earliest exposures, such as the “Desk Attendants” and other unpublished photographs, the publication follows his development through to the middle-eastern and Asian works of 2007/2008. Every single exposure in Gursky’s encyclopedic morphology is a vital piece in the puzzle, which over some 28 years has expanded into one of the most breathtaking and vertiginous visions of our times.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Martin Hentschel.
In all eras there have been artists who have aspired to encyclopedic summation of the world--"to find a form to accommodate the mess," as Samuel Beckett once put it. The Renaissance marked the juncture at which it became impossible for any one person to have read every book in existence (just as books became widely available for the first time, ironically); today it would be a feat even to count the number of toothpastes in your average grocery store. Andreas Gursky's photographs are merciless in their vertiginous will to make every last tube of toothpaste count, to compel every constituent into legibility. His optical fanaticism is not an effect of specific consumerist critique so much as a desire to set before the eye what was deemed too much for the mind, pressing the extreme surfeit of the world's contents against its limits. For this volume, Gursky has chosen more than 150 works from his fund of photographs, reaching back to his student days at the Folkwang Hochschule Essen and his studies with Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. The earliest exposures here include the Desk Attendants series and other unpublished photographs, and the most recent images were conceived especially for the book. Every single exposure in Gursky's encyclopedic morphology is a vital piece in the puzzle, which, over the course of his 28-year career, has amounted to an encyclopedia of the unencompassable.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Sonja Fessel. Text by Ralf Beil, Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann, Elisabeth Bronfen, Sonja Fessel, et al.
A Japanese power plant, dilapidated slums, the patterned facades of an apartment complex in Paris--in the work of German art photographer Andreas Gursky, born in 1955 in Leipzig, both private dwellings and the domains of industrial and political power are made into sometimes awe-inspiring and always overpowering forces of urban life. Gursky's signature mix of epic sweep and extreme detail is ideally suited to the portrayal of large-scale architecture, eliciting its most salient features: The capacity to dwarf, to impress, to alienate and to daunt. Where many of us will habitually blank out architectural environments which cannot be accommodated by the naked eye, Gursky's approach is to photograph them in order to render them comprehensible: "My preference for clear structures is the result of my desire, perhaps illusory, to keep track of things and maintain my grip on the world." Architecture is a collection of breathtaking images by the world-famous photographer, taken between 1988 and the present day, and treating all aspects of architectural structure, from the inside out. Each of the 75 color photographs is accompanied by commentary by renowned German authors Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann, Elisabeth Bronfen, Sonja Fessel, Paul Nizon, Alfred Nordmann, Mirjam Schaub, Rudolf Schmitz, Monika Schmitz-Emans, Peter Schneemann and Thomas Zaunschirm. The resulting conjunction of text and image attractively demonstrates the depth and breadth of Gursky's concept of architecture.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Beate Söntgen, Nina Zimmer. Preface by Bernhard Mendes Bürgi.
Famed worldwide for his epically proportioned photographs, Andreas Gursky is one of very few contemporary artists able to represent cultures of excessive information--which he does through images of supermarket wares, crowds, trash, architecture and nature. The extreme detail of Gursky’s final image--achieved by digital restructuring--produces a vertiginous effect on the viewer, as it oscillates between total representation and total abstraction. It could be said that Gursky updates the eighteenth-century sublime for our times. This publication surveys the artist’s most recent creations, on display at the renowned Kunstmuseum Basel throughout the winter of 2007/2008. Two new groups of works in particular, one on Formula 1 races and the other on the famous Arirang Festival (a closely choreographed mass spectacle in North Korea’s capital of Pyongyang), are gathered here.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Essay by Peter Galassi. Foreword by Glenn D. Lowry.
The big, bold, seductive and surprising color photographs of German photographer Andreas Gursky set forth a stunning image of our contemporary world of high-tech industry, international markets, big-time sports, fast-paced tourism and slick commerce. Tracking the zeitgeist from his native Germany to such far-flung places as Hong Kong, Brasilia, Cairo, New York, Shanghai, Stockholm, Tokyo, Paris, Singapore and Los Angeles, Gursky has earned acclaim at the leading edge of contemporary art with a polished signature style that draws upon a great diversity of ideas, precedents and techniques. Created in collaboration with the artist, this oversize book surveys the fullness of his work to date with gorgeous color plates, generous two-page details, and a wealth of supporting illustrations. The first in-depth study in English of Gursky's art, this book was published in conjunction with a major retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Andreas Gursky
Andreas Gursky: Bangkok
Andreas Gursky: Works 80-08
Andreas Gursky: Works 80-08
Andreas Gursky: Architecture
Andreas Gursky
Andreas Gursky