Overview
The photographs of Thomas Struth on view at the gallery depict cities from Europe to Asia and America. In all of these images, the viewer is confronted with an architectural scenery all but devoid of people. In "Strasse in Los Angeles, Los Angeles" 2002, Thomas Struth places himself and his camera right in the street. The vantage point makes the artist and viewer part of the scene. However, the lack of life in this residential area distances the viewer at the same time. In other works like "Manzhouli, Manzhouli," 2002 and "Nanjing Nanjing," 2002 the position in space is more difficult to locate. Atmosphere plays a role in these photographs, from the clarity of daylight in "Avenida Tiradentes", 2001, to the hazy vista in "Pudong Shanghai",1999, to the dramatic night sky in "Drammen 2", 2001.
Thomas Struth: New Work
8 November 2019 - 20 December, 2003
Opening reception: Thursday 7 November, 5 - 9 pm
Marian Goodman Gallery is very pleased to announce an exhibition of new pictures by the German artist Thomas Struth; a series of colour photographs taken between 1999 and 2002, entitled "Cities".
The photographs of Thomas Struth on view at the gallery depict cities from Europe to Asia and America. In all of these images, the viewer is confronted with an architectural scenery all but devoid of people. In "Strasse in Los Angeles, Los Angeles" 2002, Thomas Struth places himself and his camera right in the street. The vantage point makes the artist and viewer part of the scene. However, the lack of life in this residential area distances the viewer at the same time. In other works like "Manzhouli, Manzhouli," 2002 and "Nanjing Nanjing," 2002 the position in space is more difficult to locate. Atmosphere plays a role in these photographs, from the clarity of daylight in "Avenida Tiradentes", 2001, to the hazy vista in "Pudong Shanghai",1999, to the dramatic night sky in "Drammen 2", 2001.
Since the late seventies, Thomas Struth has been known for his architectural and urban photographs, portraits, landscapes, and museum interiors. Trained first in painting, he took up photography in 1974 while a student at the Dusseldorf Academy of Fine Arts under Gerhard Richter (1974), and later, Bernd and Hilla Becher (1976). First photographing people in the streets of Dusseldorf, and other cities, from 1974 to 1977, he later drew on this experience in an early body of work, the black & white street and city scapes, which began in 1977. Early portraits of friends, which began in 1983, launched a series of psychologically oriented family portraits in 1986.
Struth's work is characterized by an oblique vantage point and a clarity and neutrality which permits the universal subject to speak. In the past decade he has worked in a variety of genres: portraits of nature-landscapes and flowers commissioned for the Winterthur hospital in Winterthur, Switzerland (1992); culture-scapes -- the China pictures (1995-99); museum pictures (1989-2002); and vast landscapes - including the Paradise pictures (1998-2001)-dense virgin forests in Brazil, Japan, China, Australia, and Germany; and more recently, landscapes of the American West.
Born in Geldern, Germany in 1954, Struth lives in Dusseldorf, Germany, and works in situ. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Dusseldorf from 1973-1980. In 1978 he was an artist in residence at PS-1 Studios, Long Island City. From 1993 to 1996 he was the first Professor of Photography at the newly founded Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe. He was awarded the Spectrum International Prize for Photography, Stiftung Niedersachsen, Germany in 1997-98.
Thomas Struth's work has been exhibited widely in Europe and the United States at such institutions as the Sprengel Museum, Hannover; Carré d'Art, Nîmes; Kunstmuseum, Bonn; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington; the Renaissance Society, Chicago; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Portikus, Frankfurt. His work has also been exhibited at Documenta IX, Kassel; the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, and the Skulptur Projecte Münster 87, Münster. In 2000-2001, a retrospective of his work, Thomas Struth: My Portrait, was shown at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and the National Museum of Art, Kyoto, Japan. In 2002, Thomas Struth's exhibition Dschungelbilder was shown in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and New Pictures from Paradise at the Universidad de Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain.
Most recently an important touring retrospective of the artist's work has been seen in four different cities in the U.S., originating at the Dallas Museum of Art, and then travelling to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
