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Lot Essay
Known for his meticulous depictions of human activity on a grand scale, Andreas Gursky’s monumental photographs merge conceptual rigor with a virtuosic understanding of the art form. Referencing the Ukrainian boxer of the same name, Klitschko is a visually complex example of the artist’s signature style. Often working in thematic groups, Gursky’s photographs of airports, sporting events, stock exchanges, and other populated scenes are documentary in subject but push beyond the bounds of traditional depictions. Having studied under the acclaimed duo of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the young artist was heavily influenced by their ordered representations of reality. Expanding outward from these typologies of the visible, Gursky employs digital techniques to transform the everyday into a more intense, detailed version of itself. Evoking thoughts about the hyperreal, works such as Klitschko are both recognizable and perplexing at the same time. As art historian Peter Galassi notes, “It is Gursky’s fiction, but it is our world” (P. Galassi, “Gursky’s World,” in Andreas Gursky, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2001, p. 41). Based on ubiquitous spectacles representative of the constantly expanding human environment, each image throws the ordinary into spectacular focus.
A potent demonstration of Gursky’s ability to supercharge the mundane, Klitschko is an expansive photograph that shows a tense moment during a boxing match. Photographed from a raised vantage point, the image allows the audience to peer down on the scene as a detached observer. The ring is surrounded by hundreds of spectators who all face the brightly-lit stage. Their focus is on a mass of officials, coaches, and heavyweights milling about inside the ropes. Instead of zooming in and highlighting this chaotic scene, Gursky instead centers the lighting rig in his image so that the fighters and their crew are overtaken by a complex jumble of metal and glass. Suspended from the ceiling, this apparatus is topped by two screens that show enlarged views to the rapt audience. It is important to note that Gursky has digitally superimposed these images with enlargements of his own image rather than the original digital broadcasts that would have been visible in the moment. By doing so he problematizes our viewing of the image as we become aware that it is much more crisp and detailed than documentary images of the real world. At the same time, the camera’s viewpoint floats above this complex composition and lends the entire work a semi-detached air that balances between cold documentary and the heat of the action. “When you reach a certain height, you can show the spaciousness of the subject, but at the same time the character of the picture becomes much more technical and loses its poetry,” Gursky notes. “If you fly in too close, then the picture becomes narrative and the generality that I’m seeking loses its clarity and sharpness” (A. Gursky, quoted in Andreas Gursky, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 2017, p. 118). Like his contemporaries Candida Höfer, Thomas Struth, and Thomas Ruff, Gursky has an innate ability to combine generalized imagery with enticing visual intrigue.
In the early 1990s, Gursky began exploring the possibilities afforded by combining his formal photographic process with digital technologies. Using a film negative as his starting point, he was able to enhance and transform the scene to create hyperreal clarity, all-over focus, and other compositional elements not achievable with traditional means. In works like Klitschko, the sheer amount of visual information is emphasized by crystalline focus throughout. Rows of blue chairs, intricate spotlight configurations, and masses of people throughout the arena vie for the viewer’s attention. “Figuratively speaking, what I create is a world without hierarchy, in which all the pictorial elements are as important as each other,” the artist explains. “The experience of space dissolves in favor of a dissected plane that is gradually scanned and read in its linear structure” (A. Gursky, quoted in The Creators Project, “Andreas Gursky and Richie Hawtin Stage a Photo-Techno Mashup,” Vice, November 10, 2016). Because there is no easy place for the eye to rest, one must take in the entire work at once as an overwhelming swell of visual information. Flattening the depth of field, Gursky brings everything to the fore so that each detail becomes a charged element in his tense composition.
A potent demonstration of Gursky’s ability to supercharge the mundane, Klitschko is an expansive photograph that shows a tense moment during a boxing match. Photographed from a raised vantage point, the image allows the audience to peer down on the scene as a detached observer. The ring is surrounded by hundreds of spectators who all face the brightly-lit stage. Their focus is on a mass of officials, coaches, and heavyweights milling about inside the ropes. Instead of zooming in and highlighting this chaotic scene, Gursky instead centers the lighting rig in his image so that the fighters and their crew are overtaken by a complex jumble of metal and glass. Suspended from the ceiling, this apparatus is topped by two screens that show enlarged views to the rapt audience. It is important to note that Gursky has digitally superimposed these images with enlargements of his own image rather than the original digital broadcasts that would have been visible in the moment. By doing so he problematizes our viewing of the image as we become aware that it is much more crisp and detailed than documentary images of the real world. At the same time, the camera’s viewpoint floats above this complex composition and lends the entire work a semi-detached air that balances between cold documentary and the heat of the action. “When you reach a certain height, you can show the spaciousness of the subject, but at the same time the character of the picture becomes much more technical and loses its poetry,” Gursky notes. “If you fly in too close, then the picture becomes narrative and the generality that I’m seeking loses its clarity and sharpness” (A. Gursky, quoted in Andreas Gursky, exh. cat., Hayward Gallery, London, 2017, p. 118). Like his contemporaries Candida Höfer, Thomas Struth, and Thomas Ruff, Gursky has an innate ability to combine generalized imagery with enticing visual intrigue.
In the early 1990s, Gursky began exploring the possibilities afforded by combining his formal photographic process with digital technologies. Using a film negative as his starting point, he was able to enhance and transform the scene to create hyperreal clarity, all-over focus, and other compositional elements not achievable with traditional means. In works like Klitschko, the sheer amount of visual information is emphasized by crystalline focus throughout. Rows of blue chairs, intricate spotlight configurations, and masses of people throughout the arena vie for the viewer’s attention. “Figuratively speaking, what I create is a world without hierarchy, in which all the pictorial elements are as important as each other,” the artist explains. “The experience of space dissolves in favor of a dissected plane that is gradually scanned and read in its linear structure” (A. Gursky, quoted in The Creators Project, “Andreas Gursky and Richie Hawtin Stage a Photo-Techno Mashup,” Vice, November 10, 2016). Because there is no easy place for the eye to rest, one must take in the entire work at once as an overwhelming swell of visual information. Flattening the depth of field, Gursky brings everything to the fore so that each detail becomes a charged element in his tense composition.