Andreas Gursky

Sprüth Magers, Berlin
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2011

Exhibition Catalogue, Krefeld, Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Haus Lange und Haus Esters; Stockholm, Moderna Museet; Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery, Andreas Gursky: Werke - Works, 80-08, 2008-09, p. 243, another example exhibited and illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although it fails to fully convey the subtle variations in the blue apparent in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Visible only in raking light are a few extremely thin and isolated surface scratches to the plexiglass. There is evidence of extremely light and superficial rubbing to the extreme outer edges of the frame and a tiny impression towards the top left corner, on the left edge of the frame.
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Impressive in scope and scale, Andreas Gursky’s Jumeirah Palm from 2008 is an arresting example of the artist’s extraordinary ability to create images of both incredible beauty and thought-provoking content. Created the same year Gursky was awarded the prestigious Kaiserring der Stadt Goslar, Jumeirah Palm epitomizes the artist’s career-long observation of humanity, or, as Martin Hentschel writes of “humans as social type…as ‘species’” (Martin Hentschel in: Exhibition Catalogue, Krefeld, Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Haus Lange und Haus Esters and travelling, Andreas Gursky: Werke-Works 80-08, 2008-09, p. 32).

Taken from Gursky’s hallmark bird’s eye vantage point, Jumeirah Palm offers a panoramic view of its subject, Palm Jumeirah in Dubai. Advertised as the world’s largest man-made island, Palm Jumeirah was first started in 2001, and is comprised of four thousand luxury homes that have been built over reclaimed land off the coast of Dubai into the Persian Gulf. In the present work row after row of perfectly aligned and seemingly identical houses stretch across the composition, rendering an artificial reality constructed before our eyes. This subject would have been of particular appeal to Gursky, who since the early 90s has used digital manipulation to achieve the desired result in his images. Thus, in the present work the artist focusses his attention on a manufactured landscape to create an analogy for human existence.

The fine detail captured by Gursky’s lens invites the viewer to approach the image, perhaps searching for subtle differences among the dwellings that will belie the human activity that happens amidst them. Simultaneously, the monumental proportions of Jumeirah Palm force the viewer to stand back in order to assimilate the image as a whole. This dual nature of the photograph is a key element in Gursky’s oeuvre, who has explained how “You never notice arbitrary details in my work. On a formal level, countless interrelated micro and macrostructures are woven together, determined by an overall organisational principle. A closed microcosm which, thanks to my distanced attitude toward my subject, allows the viewer to recognise the hinges that hold the system together” (Andreas Gursky quoted in: Michael Fried, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before, New Haven and London 2008, p. 156).

Gursky’s very early Desk Attendants series of the late 1980s already indicates this motivation, one that years later led the artist to pursue subjects such as his celebrated series of Stock Exchanges or those in the images taken in Bahrain, Pyongyang or the present Jumeirah Palm. In these, early photographs of Germany’s top corporations’ entrance halls, Gursky subtly and cannily unmasks these institutions’ power structures, hinting at a wider, and more globalised agenda that would permeate his body of work from then onwards. However, whilst his photographs of the 1990s seem to concentrate on the globalisation of capital markets, during the 2000s Gursky went a step further to reveal the globalised nature of current lifestyle, with images ranging from Formula 1 races and other sporting events to luxury shops, airports, parties and residential areas.  What is fascinating about this allegedly disparate imagery is that an underlying pattern emerges throughout; a grid structure that unifies socioeconomic landscapes worldwide. Hentschel’s analysis of Gursky’s work rightly points out how “with the morphology of the grid as well as variations of the stripped image, Gursky manages time and again to create even subcutaneous homologies that largely elude verbal analysis…He is intent on a description of the world that goes beyond hours and days-a world that is not made up of hundreds of solitary instances, but configurations that are to some extent repeatable” (Martin Hentschel, Op. cit., p. 29).

Populated predominantly by foreign inhabitants, the landscape of Jumeirah Palm unfolds before our eyes to an apparent endless extent, a concoction of communities of quasi-Babelic magnitude. Here, Gursky’s choice of elevated viewpoint and an absence of boundaries in his composition eliminate the notion of perspective, inspiring an enigmatic and almost abstract sense of detachment in the viewer, a strategy that echoes the artist’s approach to masterpieces such as Paris, Montparnasse from 1993 and Rhein II from 1999. Indeed, in its encompassing interpretation of the Middle-Eastern landscape Gursky’s Jumeirah Palm is a stunning demonstration of the photographer’s singular and revolutionary ability to create metaphors for our global era.