Title

Andreas Gursky

Venues

National Gallery Of Victoria: International. (1 November 2008 – 22 February 2009)

Date

(2008 – 2009)

Summary

Single-artist exhibition. Located: Australia (VIC). Photographs

Curator

Isobel Crombie

Country of context

Australia

Abstract

 Andreas Gursky (born 1955) is one of the world’s leading contemporary international artists. In essence, his photographs are concerned with the experience of life in a globalised world. Through a combination of enormous scale; the most precise pin-sharp detail; and bold use of colour,
he systematically represents the individuals place within our complex, fast-paced consumer society. As Flash Art (2007) noted, Gursky scours global locations for scenes that explore ‘thematic dichotomies of macro and micro; individual and mass; photographic documentation and abstract formalism.’
Gursky has photographed quintessentially modern scenes – shops, stock markets, apartment buildings, leisure centres, and tourist sites – showing the world as high-tech, fast-paced, expensive, commercialised and overpopulated. Far more than a depressing spectacle of consumerism and globalisation, the sheer beauty and scale of Gursky’s photographs is highly seductive. Ultimately his extraordinary images are a visceral experience that makes us profoundly consider our own place within this world.{gallery media, 2oo8]