Thomas Struth

Thomas Struth
02.10.2019 - 19.01.2020

Curators: Thomas Weski, Curator, Berlin; and Lucía Agirre, Curator, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Exhibition organized by Haus der Kunst, Munich, in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is presenting the exhibition entitled Thomas Struth, a complete journey through five decades of one of the most influential European post-war photographers, whose evolution as an artist has been marked by social concerns.

The images of Thomas Struth (b. 1954, Geldern, Germany) receive their signature character from the questions they raise about the relevance of public space, family ties, nature, culture, and the limits of new technologies. Thus, Struth addresses essential questions like the instability of social structures and the fragility of human existence through images whose formal elegance prompts the audience’s participation and empathy towards these topics.

This exhibition connects Struth’s initial concepts—seen in the archival material that the artist has collected over the years—to his well-defined groups of finished works, such as Unconscious Places, Family Portraits, Audience, Museum Photographs, New Pictures from Paradise, and This Place.

These, in turn, establish a dialogue with other works, such as Berlin Project (Berlin Projekt), a video conceived in 1997 in collaboration with media artist Klaus vom Bruch, with other more recent groups like Nature & Politics, Animals, and with the landscape and flower photographs created for the wards of Lindberg hospital.

The relationships among these works highlight Struth’s ability to combine analysis with photographic creation in multiple subjects and mediums, resulting in powerful photographic images.