Andreas Gursky / Les Mées

London’s Hayward Gallery stages the first major retrospective in a UK institution of the work of acclaimed German photographer Andreas Gursky (Germany, 1955) from 25 January 2018.

Widely regarded as one of the most significant photographers of our time, Gursky is known for his large-scale, often spectacular pictures that portray emblematic sites and scenes of the global economy and contemporary life. The exhibition will feature approximately 60 of the artist’s ground-breaking photographs, from the 1980s through to his most recent work, which continues to push the boundaries of the medium. Gursky’s art is driven by an interest, and insight, into forms of collective existence and includes depictions of massive man-made structures and huge gatherings of people in nightclubs, factories, arenas, and vast landscapes. As he has stated: “I only pursue one goal: the encyclopedia of life.”

Andreas Gursky / Rhine II

Andreas Gursky / 99 cent

Exhibition marks 50th anniversary

Andreas Gursky marks the beginning of the Hayward Gallery’s 50th anniversary year and is the first exhibition to take place in the gallery following its two-year refurbishment, along with two of Southbank Centre’s other venues, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room. For the first time since the Hayward’s original opening, the gallery’s pyramid roof lights will allow natural light into the spaces below.

Artworks on display

The exhibition includes some of the artist’s most well known works including Paris, Montparnasse (1993), an immense and iconic photograph showing a seemingly endless block of flats; and Rhine II (1999/2015) a sleek digitally-tweaked vision of the river as a contemporary minimalist symbol. Kamiokande (2007) featuring the vast underground water tank within the Kamioka Nucleon Decay Experiment, Japan; and May Day IV (2000/2014) depicting hundreds of revellers at Germany’s long-running Mayday techno music festival. Often employing a bird’s-eye perspective, these large-format pictures – which rival the scale of monumental paintings – boast an abundance of precisely captured details, all of which are uncannily in focus.

Andreas Gursky / Kamiokande

Since the late 1980s, Gursky has depicted a broad spectrum of contemporary life including sites of commerce, industry and tourism across the globe, making pictures that draw attention to our changing relationship with the natural world and chronicle the effects of globalisation on day-to-day life.

From the frenzied stock exchange seen in Chicago Board of Trade III (2009) to the vast distribution centre shown in Amazon (2016), and from the sea of candy-colored budget items featured in of 99 Cent II, Diptych (2001) to the eerily empty display shelves in Prada II (1997) his images provide a sweeping visual record of our age. Over the past three decades, Gursky has increasingly made use of computer-enabled post-production techniques to make photographs whose scale, precision, composition, and complexity are unprecedented and have critically expanded the possibilities of the medium.

Andreas Gursky / May Day IV

Andreas Gursky / Paris, Montparnasse

Andreas Gursky / Tokyo, Stock Exchange (detail)

In recent years, Gursky’s experiments in manipulating images have led him to create examples of ‘fictional photography,’ extending his implicit questioning of our faith in the factual veracity of images. As he has remarked, today, “reality can only be shown by constructing it.” Review (2015) shows a constructed fictional scene in which German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her three predecessors gaze at (and are dwarfed by) Barnett Newman’s Vir Heroicus Sublimis (1950–51).

Abstract aesthetics

Following a thread that has developed throughout Gursky’s career, a number of recent pictures share more with abstract painting than documentary photography. For example, Untitled XIX (2015), depicts acres of Dutch tulips which, seen from a considerable height, appear as a quasi-abstract composition featuring bands of subtly variegated colour. Straddling the line between abstraction and representation, these works underline the formal concerns that run through all of the artist’s work.

Andreas Gursky / Amazon

Ralph Rugoff, Hayward Gallery Director, says: ‘I’m thrilled that we will reopen Hayward Gallery with an exhibition by an artist who has created some of the most visually compelling images of his generation – work that has changed not only the vocabulary of photography, but of picture-making in general. Acutely thoughtful as well as ingeniously composed, Gursky’s photographs provoke us to reflect anew on contemporary social landscapes across the world. A true innovator engaged in thinking about and picturing the times in which we live in, Gursky is the perfect artist for launching the 50th anniversary year of the Hayward.’

Andreas Gursky is curated by Hayward Gallery Director, Ralph Rugoff, in collaboration with the artist. Eimear Martin is Assistant Curator on the exhibition.

Andreas Gursky / Retrospective
January 25 – April 22, 2018 / Hayward Gallery
Please visit the exhibition page >