Sprüth Magers

Andreas Gursky: Inherited Images

14 Mar - 19 Apr 2025

Andreas Gursky, Lützerath, 2023 (detail) and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fall of the Rebel Angel, 1562 (detail)
© Andreas Gursky / ARS, 2025
Courtesy: Sprüth Magers; Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
Andreas Gursky stands out as one of the most important photographers of his generation. His monumentally scaled works have redefined the medium in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, capturing the condition of modern-day life in condensed form. Interested in the workings of globalization, consumerism, and social phenomena as they relate to contemporary society, Gursky examines the realities of our changing planet. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present a solo show of Gursky’s new and recent works as well as a selection of his well-known photographs set in an intertextual dialogue with Old Masters at the New York gallery. Engaging with the images inscribed into our collective memories by the history of painting – from Pieter Bruegel the Elder to J.M.W. Turner and Carl Gustav Carus – the show examines how contemporary images relate to ones of the past, prompting viewers to consider their function as a silent foundation of the way we see.