Living in a Gursky world
Have recently come across this man from Leipzig who makes huge, wall-sized panoramas, alluding to the ubiquity of capitalism and globalisation, and their effect on our daily life. We are small, or absent, ant-like or ignored in the large scale, although the works remain humanised as we search in the fine detail for more and more signs of life, of our fleeting imapct as pssers by in these arid spaces.
Gursky’s work is made with a 5×4 (or 10×8) view camera, and joined together using sophisticated image manipulation techniques that are similar to Hockney’s joiners, except that you can’t see the joins, even when you look extremely closely.
The result of my first Gursky challenge is a combination of both approaches. You can definitely see the joins, and there’s a combination of viewpoints, some closer than others. It’s disjointed, less naturalistic than Gursky’s, more the way the eye sees the scene, jumping from detail to detail in a pattern. More to come over the next few months.
There’s not one, but two exhibitions of his work at the White Cube and 4 huge works at Spruth Magers, in good old London town until May, which is where I’ll be for part of April. How fortuitous!
Some Gursky links, including descriptions of his work in his own words:
on postmedia.net
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