Andreas Gursky (right) pictured with his two London dealers, Jay Jopling, the director of White Cube, and Philomene Magers. Photograph by Dafydd Jones.
After not showing his work in London for almost a decade, German photographer Andreas Gursky made up for it last Thursday with two exhibitions opening on the same night. White Cube Mason's Yard unveiled Gursky's most recent pictures of North Korea, whilst his main gallerists Monika Spruth and Philomene Magers opened their new space in London with just three photographs - 'Kuwait Stock Exchange,' 'Bahrain I', and 'Tour de France I'.
Andreas Gursky was born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1955 and studied at the Folkwangschule Essen and at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, where he earned his degree as a master-class student under Bernd Becher. Since the late 1980s, the work of Gursky has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows all over the world. His large-scale photographs portray the 21st century as the age of a globalized, capitalistic society, and address phenomena such as mass events, stock markets or futuristic architectures. Gursky also continues to devote himself to classical photographic subjects such as landscape.
Gursky's work is sometimes composed out of a single shot and at others compiled from a number of shots put together using digital technology. The perspective in many of Gursky's photographs is drawn from an elevated vantage point. This position enables the viewer to encounter scenes, encompassing both centre and periphery, which are ordinarily beyond reach. For the 'Pyongyang' series (2007), which is on view at White Cube, Gursky travelled to the Arirang Festival, held annually in North Korea in honour of the late Communist leader Kim Il Sung. The festival's mass games include more than 50,000 participants performing tightly choreographed acrobatics, against a backdrop of 30,000 schoolchildren holding coloured flip-cards that produce an ever-changing mosaic of patterns and images. Gursky's photographs describe, in panoramic dimensions, the incongruity of the brilliant colours and smiling faces of the performers within the controlled, totalitarian nature of the event.
Not only has Andreas Gursky redefined photography as a medium, he has also revolutionised the way we see the world. His work also asks vital questions about how the individual exists within mass society and what the world will look like in the future.
Andreas Gursky's most recent museum exhibition opened in February 2007 at the Haus der Kunst in Munich and will tour to Istanbul and Sharjah.
White Cube
Mason's Yard
London SW1Y 6BU
T: +44 (0)207 930 5373
www.whitecube.com
Andreas Gursky
Until 12 May
Sprüth Magers
7A Grafton Street
London, W1S 4EJ
T:+44 (0)780 427 4239
london@spruethmagers.com
www.spruethmagers.com
Andreas Gursky, 'Pyongyang I', 2007
307 x 215.5 cm, C-Print
Courtesy Monika Sprüth / Philomene Magers
Andreas Gursky, 'Bahrain I', 2005
306 x 221.5 cm, C-Print
Courtesy Monika Sprüth / Philomene Magers
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