Andreas Gursky

Galerie Monika Sprüth, Cologne
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2006

Exhibition Catalogue, Munich, Haus der Kunst, Andreas Gursky, 2002, pp. 126-7, illustration of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Krefeld Kunstmuseum; Stockholm, Moderna Museet; Vancouver, Art Gallery, Gursky 80-08, 2008-09, pp. 196-7, illustration of another example in colour

The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly warmer in the original. This work is in very good condition.
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Throughout the 1990s, Andreas Gursky famously photographed a spectrum of hotel lobbies from Atlanta (1996) to Shanghai (2000), creating iconic images of grids of hotel rooms compositionally arranged with geometric precision, which literally and metaphorically revealed the compartmentalised architectural spaces within which we choose to live out our lives. In Stateville, Illinois, Gursky brings the same thematic and formal concerns to bear on a very different but related architectural structure; instead of the marble-clad luxury of five star, air-conditioned hotels where businessmen and wealthy tourists brush shoulders as they circumnavigate the globe, here Gursky chose to portray Stateville Correctional Center, a Level 1 maximum security penitentiary, an edifice of prison cells which contain for perpetuity some of America's most notorious criminals. The effect is breathtaking and ranks Stateville, Illinois  as one of the artist's most powerful and arresting images, included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau, Munich.

 

Stateville prison was built in 1925 and is one of the few surviving examples of the panopticon concept of prison design proposed by the British philosopher and prison reformer Jeremy Bentham in the Nineteenth Century. The 'round house' structure consisted of tiers of cells built in a circle around a central viewing platform concealed behind venetian blinds. From this vantage point, the prison wardens benefit from a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the incarcerated inmates at all times, while the inmates, never certain whether they are being watched or not, are at a distinct psychological disadvantage because they have no place to hide. The innovative structure gave the prison service all the benefits of continual surveillance without any of the costs and strain on resources that would normally be required by twenty-four hour staffing.

 

In Gursky's image, we are presented with a vast, three-metre sweep of fifty-six cells which seemingly surround us across an expanse of polished concrete. Here Gursky adopts the ground-based, strictly frontal vantage point as predicated by his professors at the Dusseldorf Kunstakademie in the 1970s, Bernd and Hilla Becher, who pioneered contemporary photographic practice in their topographies of pre-Nazi industrial buildings. However, in Gursky's photograph there is a more complex play on perspective than is casually apparent: by using a wide-angled lens and digital enhancements, Gursky locates the viewer physically in the centre of the circular structure, in effect positioning us where the absent observation tower should be. It is a simple but radical device: the result is to afford the viewer the same 'panoptical' viewpoint, the same privileged faculties of observation and surveillance, which Bentham's observation tower gave the prison guards. Gursky is often credited with creating in art a godlike, omniscient viewpoint by looking down on scenes from above; here he creates the same effect of omniscience but from the ground, so that the viewer feels at once the sense of the overarching structure, but also the direct confrontation with the individuals contained therein.

 

From afar, the organisational scheme and the repeating, metallic grid of the cells recalls the pared down aesthetic beauty of Minimalism, be it Donald Judd's dispassionate wall-mounted sculptures or Agnes Martin's spiritually-invested gridded canvases. Up close, however, Gursky's large format negative affords a rich tapestry of detail. Behind the ostensible order imposed by the uniformity of the architectural structure, each cell contains the instruments of anarchy and disorder within our society. For their time in Stateville, each of these criminals, who are marginalised by their rejection of the laws of society, is stripped of their individuality; they are levelled by their yellow and blue uniforms, their multifarious life experiences reduced to a regimentally numbered cell and identification number. In Gursky's image, he enhances the accents of blue and yellow which draw our attention to the faces that peer through the bars of each cell. As we draw closer, some engage our glance directly while others, back lit by the light pouring in through the external walls of the roundhouse, appear only as silhouettes, dehumanised by their anonymity. In Stateville, Illinois  Gursky constructs an almost Dantean vision of the crime and punishment. Like Virgil, Dante's guide in the underworld, Gursky leads us by the hand into the centre of this place of punishment, in which we might see these living souls who are literally and metaphorically contained by the circular confines of the edifice of castigation, so that we may leave enlightened. Unlike the author of the Divine Comedy, however, there is no moralizing or judgement in Gursky's choice of subject matter. Instead his imagery forces us to look with fresh eyes on our lives, finding beauty in the most unexpected of places and brilliantly uncovering the frequently overlooked patterns that permeate our existence. Going further than any of the hotel images, however, Stateville, Illinois  becomes a potent examination of freedom, justice and the human condition.