Galerie Greta Meert is pleased to present a selection of works from two intricately linked bodies of work by German photographer Thomas Struth in a new Online Viewing Room. This viewing room brings together Struth's early black-and-white pictures of New York and Chicago, along with Vehicle Assembly Building, Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral 2008—a striking example of one of his first technology photographs.
Thomas Struth (b. 1954, Geldern, Germany) first gained recognition with his black-and-white photographs of streets and urban environments. The deadpan yet refined central perspective in these photographs of Paris, Rome, Tokyo, New York, Chicago, or the cities of the Ruhr valley, allows for a quasi-scientific analysis of our built environment. Expanding on the topological method of his teachers Bernd and Hilla Becher, Struth went on to apply his intensely focused photographic approach to a wide range of subjects. From Family Portraits to Flowers, Places of Worship or Museums and their audiences, and more recently, sites of technology, he devices idiosyncratic ways to explore themes that pertain to central societal and philosophical questions.
Thomas Struth (b. 1954, Geldern, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. Struth is an exponent of the Dusseldorf Academy's school of photography, he won recognition some twenty years ago for black and white–like studies of various places: cities in the Rhur valley, Paris, Rome, Naples, Japan, China. These urban portraits eventually led him to undertake family portraits, and further to his series on museums and earthly paradises. The past several years have seen an increase in the importance of colour in his work, and images from the artist's travels in Asia and South America evince a growing pictorial emphasis in his art.
Over the past 30 years, Galerie Greta Meert established itself as one of Brussels’ leading contemporary art galleries. Founded in 1988 as Galerie Meert Rihoux, it was subsequently renamed after its founding director Greta Meert in 2006. Located in the center of Brussels, the gallery occupies a five-story Art Nouveau building designed by Louis Bral and renovated for the gallery by renowned Belgian architects Hilde Daem and Paul Robbrecht. Since 2012 three floors of the building are dedicated to exhibitions, making it possible to maintain an expanded exhibition schedule.
