As the world's most collectable living photographer, Andreas Gursky has photographed a wide array of scenes: from the worker bees at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, seen from high above, to a remarkable neutrino observatory in Japan (Kamiokande, 2007) Now the photographer has captured North Korea's incredible Arirang Festival, featured as a spectacular gatefold in this month's issue of Wallpaper*, where 70,000 choreographed performers entertain 50,000 rapturous spectators.
Shooting on a 5in x 7in large-format camera, before scanning his negatives to work on digitally in his Herzog & De Meuron-designed Dusseldorf studio, Gursky admits to finding the rapidly changing gymnastic displays hard to capture smoothly. Although he originally had permission to shoot for one evening, he attended seven shows in September 2005, and made a second visit a month later to get more of the shots he needed.
To view a selection of Gursky's extraordinary works alongside images of the opening party at Haus der Kunst, click on the image above.
Art theorists love Gursky's work because he gives them so much to get their teeth into in debates about the representation of reality. In his shots of a discount store, 99 Cent II Diptychon (2001), which this month sold for £1.7million (a record for any photograph sold at auction), he photographed the shelves of goods separately, and then put them back together with digital manipulation in post-production. 'The view I created in 99 Cent does exist in reality, but you'd have to destroy the wall of the store to photograph it,' he says.
From 22 March, Gursky's latest body of works will be presented for the first time in the UK, at the opening of the new Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers gallery in Mayfair. Monika Sprüth's collaboration with Andreas Gursky dates back to the early 1990s, when she first showed Gursky's work at her Cologne gallery.
A major retrospective of Gursky's work is also currently on show at the Haus der Kunst gallery in Munich. The opening was a huge success, with guests (including Wallpaper*, of course) travelling from all over the world to celebrate the man and quaff Champagne in his honour at Munich's renowned P1 club. Check out our picture gallery for party images. The exhibition runs until 13 May.
To see the remarkable North Korean series in print, see the March issue of Wallpaper*, out now.
INFORMATION
The new Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers gallery space opens on 22 March and will feature works by artists they have been working with for the last 25 years, including Rosemarie Trockel, Cindy Sherman, Peter Fischli and David Weiss and, of course, Andreas Gursky.
- Website
- http://www.spruethmagers.com
- Telephone
- 44.7804 274 239
- Address
- 7/7a Grafton Street, London
