Andreas Gursky

DescEN Gursky, Andreas 1955 Leipzig - lives and works in D�sseldorf "Zoobr�cke". 1988. C-Print. Matted and framed. Number: 11/12. 61 x 43,5cm (61 x 50,8cm). Signed, titled, dated and numbered in pencil on the right sheet margin. Reverse of the frame with a label containing information on the image, and a signature in black ink. Image margins very slightly faded due to the mat. Image otherwise in very good condition. Provenance: From the photographer to the Galerie Tabea Langenkamp, D�sseldorf, for a benefit auction (presumably 1992). DescDE Gursky, Andreas 1955 Leipzig - lebt und arbeitet in D�sseldorf "Zoobr�cke". 1988. C-Print. Passepartout. Rahmen. Exemplar 11/12. 61 x 43,5cm (61 x 50,8cm). Auf dem rechten Blattrand mit Bleistift signiert, betitelt, datiert und nummeriert sowie auf der Rahmenr�ckseite Etikett mit Angaben zum Bild, darin mit schwarzer Tinte signiert. Bildr�nder vom Passepartout minimal verblichen. Bild ansonsten in gutem Zustand . Provenienz: Vom Photographen an Galerie Tabea Langenkamp, D�sseldorf, zwecks Versteigerung in einer Benefizauktion (vermutlich 1992).

194 ANDREAS GURSKY Untitled 1 (Carpet), 1993 c-print mounted on Plexiglas, in artist's frame sheet 69 x 83 in. (175.3 x 210.8 cm.) frame 71 x 85 in. (180.3 x 215.9 cm.) Signed, titled, numbered and dated "O.T.I '93 5/5 A. Gursky" on the reverse of the mount . This work is number 5 from an edition of 5. Estimate $60,000 - 80,000 194 ANDREAS GURSKY

ANDREAS GURSKY Rhein, 1996 c-print laminated on Plexiglas, in artist's frame sheet 57 3/8 x 71 1/8 in. (145.8 x 180.8 cm.) frame 73 x 86 1/8 in. (186 x 222 cm.) Signed, titled, numbered and dated "'Rhein' '96 5/6 A. Gursky" on the reverse of the mount. This work is number 5 from an edition of 6. $1,000,000 - 1,500,000

Andreas Gursky (B. 1955) Klitschko signed, titled, numbered and dated 'Klitschko '99 1/6 A. Gursky' (on the reverse) color coupler print face mounted on Plexiglas in wooden artist frame 81 7/8 x 103 in. (208 x 261.3 cm.) Executed in 1999. This work is number one from an edition of six. Galerie Andrea Caratsch, Zrich Acquired from the above by the present owner PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art, XII Annual Biennale of Sydney, May-July 2000. New York, Museum of Modern Art; Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofa; Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou; Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Andreas Gursky, March 2001-September 2002, pp. 152-153 and 185, no. 46 (another example exhibited and illustrated in color). In his monumental 1999 work, Andreas Gursky elevates the vast sports arena flooded with people into a spectacle of color and drama. Named for the Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko, the work captures the moment after the athlete's triumphant match against Axel Schulz that earned him the 1999 European Heavyweight crown. The fateful event, however, is not Gursky's focus: according to him, "it is not the decisive moment but the decisive standpoint that is the measure of all artistic things" (A. Gursky, quoted in R. Beil, "Just what is it that makes Gursky's photos so different, so appealing?" Andreas Gursky: Architecture, exh. cat., Institut Mathildenhöhe, 2008, p.9). Taking the gigantic interior and crowd of people en masse as his focus, Gursky dissolves the individual into the multitude. On characteristic large-format, the artist refines his imagery with meticulous digital processing, enhancing color and crystallizing minute details. With its flickering sports lighting and Lilliputian figures, Klitschko registers the feverish euphoria as the champion is named, yet maintains a quiet, almighty distance. Gursky began incorporating digital technology in 1992 to resolve what the artist considered to be the fundamental inadequacies of the documentary practice, enhancing color so that the arena's harsh spotlights, vast space and endless rows of blue seating transform into a jewel-tinted, ceremonious vision. Though the crowd is concentrated on the ring, Gursky also renders the heavy lighting rigs, scoreboards, and speakers in sharp detail. The artist also digitally inserts the imagery reproduced on huge flat screens above the boxing ring, calling attention to the reproducibility of images and the way in which media broadcasts filter our understanding and experiences we no longer observe reality as it is, but rather through endless mediation. Though its self-referential visual play of real and manipulated imagery, Gursky's work becomes a dazzling theater-in-the-round. The work is characteristic of Gursky's interest in vast spaces constructed for the collective, mass population. People in Gursky's pictures are viewed from afar; their individuality is lost against the weight of floor, sky or ceiling. As Gursky's heroic champion, Wladimir Klitschko, blurs into the surrounding crowd, the photograph becomes a beautifully curated observance as it finds an abstract formalism in the masses. Indeed, his pictures occupy an undecipherable place between painting and photography, landscape and human concern. In the late 1900s, modernist painters began to render the growing crowds and new designated spaces for large crowds. The anonymity of city dwellers was rendered iconically by Edouard Manet in his work, Music in the Tuileries. In Klitschko, Gursky creates a synonymous image at the turn of the twenty-first century, rendering a thoroughly modern image by relaying the crowded spectacle of the everyday. The sense of detached alienation also is rendered by both artists as a symptom of modernism--poignantly captured as the individual is lost in the crowd. According to Gursky, in the 1990s his pictures "became increasingly formal and abstract. A visual structure appears to dominate the real events shown in my pictures. I subjugate the real situation to my artistic concept of the picture" (A. Gursky, quoted in L. Cooke, "Andreas Gursky: Visionary (Per) Versions," in M. L. Syring (ed.), Andreas Gursky: Photographs from 1984 to the Present, exh. cat., Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1998, p. 14). While Klitschko's geometric structure resembles the rigorous aesthetic of Minimalist Art, the work's expansive picture-plane and all-over imagery powerfully evoke Jackson Pollock's painted abstractions. Simultaneously, Gursky's work has the grand presence and formal weight of a nineteenth-century landscape painting, a genre that often draws on the sublime quality of the everyday. In his beautiful orchestration of color, Gursky unifies the mass, omnisciently hinting at an overarching sense of order even in utter chaos. But the artist is careful to retain his necessarily photographic level of detail, as it is from his meticulous clarity that his picture appears with such immediacy. By manipulating the photograph, he attains a level of detail impossible to see through the human eye. Gursky's investigation of vision recalls Georges Seurat's similar investigation of color. Seurat aimed to render nature in a more scientific method, and juxtaposed notes of color to create a more accurate rendering of prismatic color. In Klitschko, Gursky perfectly merges creative skill and contemporary insight, and his work emerges like a panoptic portrait of global culture. Originally taught by the celebrated artists Bernd and Hilla Becher at the renowned Künstacademie, Gursky is perhaps the most famous member of the Becher-influenced Düsseldorf group. In Klitschko, Gursky's industrial interior is depicted with the Düsseldorf group's characteristic detachment, yet his glowing color recalls the oft-cited influence of Jeff Wall. Here, Gursky's rendering of the urban masses within the Cologne arena retains the powerful chromatics of Wall's backlit transparencies with the Bechers' gaze of blank wonder.

Andreas Gursky (B. 1955) Zoobrücke, Köln signed, titled, numbered and dated 'Zoobrücke 88 9/12 A. Gursky' (on the reverse) chromogenic print face-mounted to Plexiglas image: 45¼ x 34½in. (115 x 88cm.) sheet: 58¼ x 47¼in. (148 x 120cm.) Executed in 1988, this work is number nine from an edition of twelve Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich. Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1999. Hamburg, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Andreas Gursky: Fotografien 1984-1993, 1994 (illustrated in colour, p. 35). This exhibition later travelled to Amsterdam, De Appel Foundation. San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Permanent Collection (another from the edition exhibited). 'I wasn't interested in an unusal, possibly picturesque view of the Rhine, but in the most contemporary possible view of it' (A. Gursky, quoted in L. Cooke, 'Andreas Gursky: Vision (Per)Versions, M. L. Syring (ed.), Andreas Gursky: Photographs from 1984 to the present, exh. cat., Dusseldorf, Kunsthaus Düsseldorf, 1998, p. 13).