Last month, Andreas Gursky became the most expensive living photographer. The Gagosian Gallery in New York exhibits his latest work on oceans.
The German photographer Andreas Gursky is on a meteoric rise in the art world, much to the delight of Christie’s, which recently sold one of his large blue abstracts, Rhein II, for the record sum of $4.34m. It’s hardly surprising, then, to see his painterly photographs of natural phenomena adorning the walls of the Gagosian Gallery in New York. Trained at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Gursky’s pursuit of sublime beauty in landscapes and horizons the world over has garnered comparisons to the Romantic painters of the 19th century. Bangkok and Oceans delivers another lesson in conceptual photography.
But Gursky is hardly a dreamer. In his signature cold colors, he seeks, and finds, his supernatural visions in reality, conjuring an unexpected beauty out of a scene through original angle or composition. For this series, he abandoned his usual earthly perspective for one airborne . He was inspired to do so during a flight from Dubai to Melbourne. Through Gursky’s cartographic vision, the viewer rediscovers the waters that feed our planet, which suffer from our pollution. The large-format series is marked by a rigorous balance of the elements: small pieces of land on the edge of the frame encircle the vast, central, empty blue, which stares the viewer straight in the eyes. Bangkok and Oceans is a raw portrait of the watery part of our world.
Jonas Cuénin
Andreas Gursky, Bangkok and Oceans
Through December 17
Gagosian Gallery
522 West 21st Street
New York, NY 10011
Tel. 212-741-1717
