Product Description
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.
About the Author
Andreas Gursky
was born in 1955 in Leipzig, East Germany, and studied at the
prestigious Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf. His first solo gallery show was
held at Galerie Johnen & Schottle, Cologne, in 1988. A solo museum
exhibition followed the next year, at the Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld.
By this time, Gursky was increasing the scale of his photographs, and
by the 90s was using the largest photographic paper available; by 2000
he was combining sheets to make images larger still. In the early 1990s
Gursky began to use digital technology for retouching and altering
negatives, and more recently he has produced work entirely fabricated
by computer. Gursky has had recent solo exhibitions at Matthew Marks
Gallery, New York, and White Cube, London. A major mid-career
retrospective traveled the world in 2001, with U.S. stops at The Museum
of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.