Andreas Gursky

Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above from the present owner

Munich, Haus der Kunst; Istanbul Museum of Modern Art; United Arab Emirates, Sharjah Art Museum, Andreas Gursky, February 2007 - January 2008 (another example)
New York, Matthew Marks Gallery, Andreas Gursky, May - June 2007 (another example)

This work is in excellent condition. Close inspection under raking light reveals a few superficial handling marks in places to the Plexiglas. There one minor and thin scratch about 2 inches long to the center right edge of the wood frame and another one about 3 inches long just below it. This work is framed in the artist's blonde wood frame behind Plexiglas.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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During the 1980s, Andreas Gursky emerged as one of the leading lights among a group of German photographers schooled by the eminent professors Bernd and Hilla Becher. Absorbing their systemically objective and rigorously conceptual style, Andreas Gursky's art provides a poetic commentary on our world, consisting of a series of monumental, animated vitrines, which highlight our relative insignificance within the magnitude of our surroundings. The May Day series in particular - a body of work which contains large crowds of people within the confines of the photographic frame- illustrates the frenetic human activity occasioned by public celebrations historically recognized on the 1^st of May.

May Day V, executed in 2006, is the creation of a perfectly constructed organism, whose scale and grandeur slows down the escalating speed of daily life. Like many of Gursky's façade photographs, May Day V is shot from a mid-view perspective, accentuating the height of the building and emphasizing the geometric cells that make up the body of the  exterior. Similar to Gursky's notable Paris, Montparnasse, 1993, the photograph eliminates the depth of a foreground, which not only serves to strengthen the control of an all-encompassing linear grid, but also forces us to confront the building face-to-face.

Perhaps May Day V's most unique quality among the series is the merging of exterior and interior landscapes by not only capturing workers gathered in groups, but also generating a compartmentalized maze which surrounds them. The earlier images in the May Day series from the 1990s portrayed crowds in one undifferentiated space, either outdoors or indoors, but not both. In contrast, May Day V of 2006 breaks through the windows of the building, to capture a sectionalized crowd peering from the outside-in. By simultaneously incorporating both metaphoric realms of society, Gursky does something magnificent: he taps into a private territory while achieving an anonymity of space. Gursky once remarked, "I want my motifs to look as though I could have photographed them anywhere. The places are not meant to be specifically described, but are meant to function more as metaphors. I am interested in global viewpoints in today's social utopias." (the artist quoted in: Exh. Cat., Kunstmuseum Basel, Andreas Gursky, 2007, p. 85). And it is precisely these social utopias that invite us into Gursky's monumental photographs and allow us to see not the individual, but the multitudes, here presented to us in a regimented and ordered environment. Yet in May Day V, amid the hundreds who inhabit this manipulated and monolithic building-scape, Gursky includes himself on the sixth floor amongst the crowd.