| |
|
Andreas Gursky Desk Attendants, Spaeter, Duisburg 1982 Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin / London © Andreas Gursky / SODRAC 2009 |
“This is what I learned from the Bechers,” Gursky says, speaking of the image Bahrain I. Although the perspective is aerial and the ground plane is steeply tilted (as in many Gursky photographs) and the composition forms an abstract pattern, there is a horizon line and a strip of sky. “My pictures normally have a sky and a ground, and it’s not only me. It’s also with Thomas Ruff [who was also a student of the Bechers],” Gursky says.
“If we photograph a building, the building stands on the ground. It’s not cut off. It’s a very conventional perspective but this—you can look at all my pictures—this is what we learned and what we think. It’s very important. If you would cut the picture, then it’s abstract [and closed off]. This way it looks more normal. You can find your own way into the picture.”
As Gursky says of his first encounter with Wall, “Because he showed his work very early in Germany, especially in Cologne, which is not far from where I live in Düsseldorf, I know him since 1986, very early. So, of course, he was really important for me and he is still very important for me. I must say he’s maybe the artist who inspires me or gives me the right push to work.
“Now I know what I have to do in my work, but when I was still a student I got lots of inspiration from him. There are some works that in a way are influenced by him. One piece, which is not in this exhibition [in Vancouver] is Giordano Bruno. I think, without knowing Jeff Wall, I would not have noticed this situation [two men, one old, one young, sitting on a bench on a sand dune in the Netherlands having an intense conversation about mathematics]. But with the difference that it is not posed.”
It seems reasonable to assume that Gursky also shares Wall’s idea that it is impossible to separate the human, the social and the economic. Gursky has dealt with these issues since he began his work, and they form one layer of its superstructure.
He focuses on places and on human beings in landscapes, built environments and crowds so enormous that people are tiny and anonymous. This is earth seen from Gursky’s famous distanced view, looking down like a Martian from above. People are at leisure, at work, at airports, at rock concerts, doing the things that people living in contemporary society do. What Gursky is seeking is a larger view than an individual picture can give, although each picture contributes to its perspective. It is a body of work that creates the critical image or meta-object, which this exhibition, part installation art and part photography, aims at presenting.
“Space is very important for me but in a more abstract way, I think,” Gursky says. “Maybe to try to understand not just that we are living in a certain building or in a certain location, but to become aware that we are living on a planet that is going at enormous speed through the universe. For me it’s more a synonym. I read a picture not for what’s really going on there, I read it more for what is going on in our world generally.”
« Page 2 First page Page 4 »Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.
