Mayday II by Andreas Gursky

Facts

Material

C-print

Size

186 x 226 cm

Description

Gursky first attracted attention with his studies of the culture and "zeitgeist" that marked the late 20th century, in particular his now iconic images of the 1990s: Kuwait Stock Exchange (2007), picturing brokers in traditional Arabic attire, 99 Cents (2001), with its overwhelming display of unbridled cheap consumerism or Mayday (2006), which takes the hype surrounding techno music and mass culture to extremes. These works all concentrate on overcrowded congregations of people and goods, on the places where people meet in a globalized world, where production, trade and consumption call the shots.

Gursky consistently remains detached, his subject matter serving as raw material for a picture plane dominated by ornamental structures or symmetry. The resulting abstract compositions have abandoned the purely documentary sphere, instead becoming a precise and aesthetic treatment of surface structures.

Location