Ocula Conversation Sandrine Colard on the 6th Lubumbashi Biennale The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the largest Francophone nation in Africa with vast resources and nearly 80 million inhabitants, is a place where commodities play a vital role in the national economy and the country's significance on the world stage. This is the context from which the 6th Lubumbashi Biennale (24 October–24 November...
Ocula Report From 20 to 21 July 2019, Artspace Sydney held a two-day symposium that brought artists in conversation with leading curators, writers, activists, academics, diplomats, and journalists from across Asia. The symposium was the final chapter of the 52 ARTISTS 52 ACTIONS exhibition, publication, website, and Instagram project. Instigated and...
Ocula News We Are Our Infrastructure, Argues Newly Announced Shanghai Biennale Chief Curator 13 December 2019 The Power Station of Art will make a fitting location for Andrés Jaque, whose past projects expose the politics concealed by buried pipes and managed cables. Spanish architect, writer, and curator Andrés Jaque has been named the chief curator of the 13th Shanghai Biennale, which will take place at the Power Station of Art (PSA) from 13 November...
Ocula Insight Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy. Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Andreas Gursky is well known for his large-scale, colour photographs which critically document the effects of globalisation and capitalism on contemporary life. Gursky’s studies under Bernd and Hilla Becher in the early 1980s at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie, were an early influence in his approach to making photographs. They were particularly well known for their de-personalised images of industrial buildings often shot in sequence to emphasise the purely documentary approach. Also influential were the New Topographics movement photographers in the United States, who photographed in an anonymous 'style' often depicting the ordinary landscapes of suburban developments and industrial parks.
Read MoreGursky’s later work is characterised by its distinct clarity, attention to composition, and a scale that recalls historical landscape paintings. His photographs emphasise the relationships of global communities and a contemporary unitary existence. In doing so Gursky regularly employs a high point of view which allows him to capture large expanses of architecture, interiors, and vast landscapes. Gursky also uses digital manipulation to further enhance the striking nature of his images.
Andreas Gursky’s work is held in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Modern, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He has exhibited internationally including at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2004), the Shanghai Biennale (2002), and the Sydney Biennial (2000). Andreas Gursky holds the record for the highest price paid for a single photographic work at auction.
Andreas Gursky lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Related Press ANDREAS GURSKY: LANDSCAPES Gagosian Quarterly : 15 November 2019 Gursky 's signature accomplishment as an artist is his ability to estrange his image from normal perception. Ocean III (2010) asks viewers to assume the nearly impossible position of comprehending the macrocosmic, while Untitled III (2002) immerses them in a microcosmic viewpoint. These distinctions can also be expressed in contrasting terms...
Related Press Andreas Gursky Captures the Pandemonium of Industrialized Overproduction Hyperallergic : 4 April 2018 Shortly before entering Andreas Gursky's latest retrospective which is installed in the Hayward Gallery's renovated digs, my phone buzzes with news from the World Economic Forum in Davos. There, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has made an offhand comment. It was nothing much: 'The dollar is one of the most liquid markets,' he stated. 'A...
Related Press All Under Heaven: Hayward Gallery Returns With Andreas Gursky Retrospective Frieze : 25 January 2018 In Andreas Gursky's Mülheim, Anglers (1989), hobby fishermen gather on the banks of the river Ruhr. As verdant forest collapses into the curl of the water, the epic romance is broken by the emergence of the Autobahn in the distance. Part of Gursky's 68-work retrospective at the newly reopened Hayward Gallery in London's Southbank Centre, it is...
Related Press A class apart: a new show explores the radical approach of the Bechers and their students Wallpaper* : 30 April 2017 In 1959, photography was still struggling to be an art form. Bernd and Hilla Becher were a young couple living in Düsseldorf, making conceptual art together. Bernd had studied painting and typography, while Hilla had completed an apprenticeship as a photographer. They began to collaborate, systematically taking pictures on an 8 x 10 of things that...
