Andreas Gursky. Works 80-08

Born in Leipzig in 1955 and living in Düsseldorf, Andreas Gursky has long been considered one of the world’s leading photographers. Works 80-08presents his entire oeuvre. The artist has selected more than 140 works from nearly three decades, the earliest of which were taken from his immediate surroundings, followed by images from an ever expanding radius, and ending in a global perspective. From distant and elevated vantage points, Andreas Gursky creates photographs that exceed the registering capacity of the eye. By revisiting locations and events repeatedly over an extended period of time, he not only sheds light on various forms of social contexts, such as mass meetings of a Capitalist or Communist nature, but also depicts structures in transformation. The photographs of large corporations and stock markets from the 1980s and onwards are examples of this.

The exhibition has been arranged in collaboration with Kunstmuseen Krefeld and Vancouver Art Gallery. In the catalogue essay, Dr. Martin Hentschel at Kunstmuseen Krefeld writes the following regarding Andreas Gursky’s expressed interest in abstract imagery:

However fruitful Gursky’s experiments with abstract visual forms may have been for the overall development of his oeuvre, there is no mistaking his lofty ambitions and the ethics behind his goal, which is directed to the “human species”. His singular achievement consists in bringing together abstraction and representation on a metaphorical level. He manages to capture itinerant parts of the world that at first sight seem to have no cohesion, but which from his perspective are “pieces in the puzzle” that interact when faced with the totality of the world.

The exhibition Works 80-08, featuring many photographs never previously shown, presents both the side of the artist where an individual image becomes an entire universe – the latest images are in Gursky’s well-known large format – as well as his encyclopaedic side. Offering space for the artist’s entire oeuvre has been made possible by the fact that he has produced small-scale copies of earlier works. This radical approach presents a generous opportunity to follow Gursky’s artistic development while at the same time conveying a whole new perspective on the individual art-works.

Andreas Gursky’s Swedish debut took place in 1995 at the Rooseum in Malmö, but since then his works have only been shown on a few separate occasions. We are therefore delighted at the prospect of introducing the artist to a broader public as well as providing those already interested a chance to delve into Gursky’s rich production.

Andreas Gursky
Works 80-08

Kurator: Fredrik Liew