Thomas Struth
07 Oct - 11 Dec 2010
© Thomas Struth
Reactor Pressure Vessel Phase Out, AKW Würgassen, Beverungen, 2009
digital c-print
160 x 294 cm, 167,5 x 301 cm, framed
Reactor Pressure Vessel Phase Out, AKW Würgassen, Beverungen, 2009
digital c-print
160 x 294 cm, 167,5 x 301 cm, framed
THOMAS STRUTH
New Works
7 October – 11 December, 2010
Galerie Max Hetzler is proud to present its eight’s solo exhibition of German artist Thomas Struth.
Struth’s work reconciles forms of documentation and contemplation. His most recent photographs offer a new experience for the viewer’s eye since most of us have not yet examined the interior of a reactor vessel, entered a space shuttle or walked around in a nuclear power station before; all places hidden from the public.
Without knowing the location, it is impossible to acknowledge in which part of the world the image has been captured. In his new series the artist forces the eye beyond normal observations and, the longer we look at the images, the more they become somehow reminiscent of abstract painting’s compositions.
Struth changes the context of the technological sublime by transferring the motives into the gallery space: Anonymous sculptures reveal structures that are incomprehensible to the majority of spectators while the viewer is confronted with alienated forms of industrial and technological progress. Titles, such as Tokamak Asdex Upgrade periphery, intensify the formality in photographs that analyze and document the human ambition and the progress of today’s industries. Also on view are photographs that record architectural sites in Korea, including an oil platform and a shipyard, strongly contrasting with the advanced technologies of the former. The depiction of the image’s architecture seems to create iconographic and hyperreal manifests of the present.
Since the late 70's Struth has been capturing and enlarging our time; the world today as seen in streets of different cities, cultural venues, worship scenes, nature and more recently industrial and technological locations, often underlining the relationship of human beings with the sublime: In former series Thomas Struth explored the relationship with high art or nature, as in the Museum-Photographs or in the Paradise-Series. Some of the most abstract photographs as Stellerator Wendelstein 7-X Detail remind us of these jungle views, nature and technology presenting similar intricate lines of either bright green vegetation or coloured cables.
Parts of this recent series are included in a touring exhibition which debuted in 2010 at the Kunsthaus Zürich and will travel to the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K20, Düsseldorf; the Whitechapel Gallery, London and the Museu Serralves in Porto.
Thomas Struth was born in 1954 and currently lives and works in Berlin. Struth has been subject of numerous exhibitions, at among others, the Museo del Prado, Madrid (2007); the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2003); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2003); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2002); Dallas Museum of Art (2002); the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (2000); the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and the National Museum of Art, Kyoto (2000).
New Works
7 October – 11 December, 2010
Galerie Max Hetzler is proud to present its eight’s solo exhibition of German artist Thomas Struth.
Struth’s work reconciles forms of documentation and contemplation. His most recent photographs offer a new experience for the viewer’s eye since most of us have not yet examined the interior of a reactor vessel, entered a space shuttle or walked around in a nuclear power station before; all places hidden from the public.
Without knowing the location, it is impossible to acknowledge in which part of the world the image has been captured. In his new series the artist forces the eye beyond normal observations and, the longer we look at the images, the more they become somehow reminiscent of abstract painting’s compositions.
Struth changes the context of the technological sublime by transferring the motives into the gallery space: Anonymous sculptures reveal structures that are incomprehensible to the majority of spectators while the viewer is confronted with alienated forms of industrial and technological progress. Titles, such as Tokamak Asdex Upgrade periphery, intensify the formality in photographs that analyze and document the human ambition and the progress of today’s industries. Also on view are photographs that record architectural sites in Korea, including an oil platform and a shipyard, strongly contrasting with the advanced technologies of the former. The depiction of the image’s architecture seems to create iconographic and hyperreal manifests of the present.
Since the late 70's Struth has been capturing and enlarging our time; the world today as seen in streets of different cities, cultural venues, worship scenes, nature and more recently industrial and technological locations, often underlining the relationship of human beings with the sublime: In former series Thomas Struth explored the relationship with high art or nature, as in the Museum-Photographs or in the Paradise-Series. Some of the most abstract photographs as Stellerator Wendelstein 7-X Detail remind us of these jungle views, nature and technology presenting similar intricate lines of either bright green vegetation or coloured cables.
Parts of this recent series are included in a touring exhibition which debuted in 2010 at the Kunsthaus Zürich and will travel to the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen K20, Düsseldorf; the Whitechapel Gallery, London and the Museu Serralves in Porto.
Thomas Struth was born in 1954 and currently lives and works in Berlin. Struth has been subject of numerous exhibitions, at among others, the Museo del Prado, Madrid (2007); the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2003); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2003); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2002); Dallas Museum of Art (2002); the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (2000); the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and the National Museum of Art, Kyoto (2000).