Overview
Marian Goodman Gallery New York is very pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Thomas Struth. This 12th solo show of the artist’s work at Marian Goodman Gallery, New York since 1990 will present two new bodies of work, both of which will have their US premiere. In the North Gallery, the artist will continue his analysis of contemporary science and technology. The South Gallery will offer an entirely new subject matter and mode of representation in Struth’s oeuvre.
Thomas Struth: New Works
November 14 - December 22, 2017
Opening Reception: Tuesday, November 14, 6-8 pm
Marian Goodman Gallery New York is very pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Thomas Struth, which will open on Tuesday, November 14th, and remain on view through Friday, December 22nd.
This 12th solo show of the artist’s work at Marian Goodman Gallery, New York since 1990 will present two new bodies of work, both of which will have their US premiere.
In the North Gallery, the artist will continue his analysis of contemporary science and technology.
The South Gallery will offer an entirely new subject matter and mode of representation in Struth’s oeuvre.
During the past fifteen months, the artist worked at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin. In the Institute’s own words: “We study the diversity of life histories and evolutionary adaptations and their limits (including diseases) of free-ranging and captive wildlife species, and their interactions with people and their environment in Germany, Europe and worldwide.” “While combining a variety of research approaches and research disciplines, the IZW in the current era of the Anthropocene, virtually all ecosystems in the world are subject to some form of anthropogenic impact. As yet, it is usually not possible to reliably predict the response of wildlife in a specific context to the rapid global change. However, such predictions are urgently needed in order to design appropriate concepts and methods for conservation intervention and prioritize the use of the limited resources available for conservation.”
These striking new works, precise and sensitively rendered, represent the artist’s pictorial stance in a surprising new manner. They draw on a range of antecedents, from Struth’s recent photographs of medical settings to the history of memento mori. In choosing subjects from the naturalist domain and in presenting specimens of earthly mortality, Struth touches on the dignity of life itself, our humanist tradition, and evolutionary questions:
“I tried to depict the animals in a beautiful, dignified fashion. I’m interested in the idea of surrender: Once you die, all the circus that you proactively create, the theater, comes to a full stop. These pictures should be like punches, the memento of death as a wake-up call.”
The works in the North Gallery continue the artist’s investigations into our modern day technological and cultural reality and are comprised of stunning large-scale works. Taken in Houston, Berlin and Munich, his images take us from the NASA’s Johnston Space Center to Siemens’ high voltage laboratory, from MMM’s medical modelling program to IABG’s testing facility for air and space, security and defense assemblies. Probing the architectural and pictorial depth of the realm in which knowledge, ambition and imagination cooperate, Struth brings us in intimate relationship with the mental complexity of our world.
The current gallery exhibition follows on a number of important solo museum shows this past year in the US and Europe, including Nature & Politics, which will open its third U.S. venue on a global tour on November 5th at the St Louis Art Museum, having been shown earlier at Museum Folkwang, Essen, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, The High Museum, Atlanta, and the Moody Center for the Arts in Houston, TX. In Europe, Figure Ground, the most comprehensive historical survey of Struth’s work to date, highlighting four decades of work in all genres, including some 350 items of research material from the artist’s archive shown for the first time, will remain on view through January 7th, 2018.
Thomas Struth’s upcoming show at the Aspen Art Museum is devoted to a series of pictures made in Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The work was made in the context of the project ‘This Place’ which included 11 other artists, and was first shown as part of the resulting group exhibition in Prague, Tel Aviv, Brooklyn and West Palm Beach. It will be on view in a solo exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum from January 19th through June 10, 2018.
Thomas Struth (born 1954 in Geldern) lives and works in Berlin. Struth studied at the Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf. Recent comprehensive exhibitions of Struth’s work include the aforementioned major touring exhibition Thomas Struth: Nature & Politics, and Thomas Struth: Figure Ground. Other recent exhibitions include Thomas Struth: Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2014); and the major traveling retrospective Thomas Struth, Photographs 1978-2010, which was seen at the Museu Serralves, Portugal; K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and the Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland (2010-2012).
In 2016, Struth was elected Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2014 he was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Royal Institute of British Architects. He is the winner of the Spectrum-International Prize for Photography of the Foundation of Lower Saxony (1997) and the Werner Mantz Prize for Photography, The Netherlands (1992). He has participated in numerous international group exhibitions including Common Ground, Venice Architecture Biennale (2012), Future Dimension, the Venice Biennial (1990) and Documenta IX (1992).
Recent publications on the artist’s work will be available during the exhibition:
The exhibition catalog for Figure Ground, published by Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, with texts by Thomas Weski, Ulrich Wilmes, Jana-Maria Hartmann, and an interview with the artist by Okwui Enwezor.
Nature and Politics, published by MACK, UK, which accompanies the ongoing exhibition touring the US and Europe, with essays by Tobia Bezzola, D. Graham Burnett and Dirk Baecker.
A new edition of “New Pictures from Paradise”, with the complete series of now 36 photographs, published by Schirmer/Mosel, Munich, including texts by Hans Rudolph Reust, Nigel Pitman and Jana-Maria Hartmann will also be available.
Please join us at the opening reception for the artist on Tuesday, November 14th, from 6-8 pm.
For further information please visit www.mariangoodman.com or please contact the Gallery at: 212 977 7160, or Linda Pellegrini, Director of Communications at: linda@mariangoodman.com.
