Thomas Struth: Nature & Politics
Thomas Struth
Nature & Politics
79 Rue du Temple Paris | 25 May - 26 July 2024
Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to present a new solo exhibition by Thomas Struth in Paris. Nature & Politics is the internationally acclaimed artist’s first solo show in France dedicated to his eponymous body of work begun in 2007. The exhibition focuses on photographs taken over the past few years at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), two of the world's most prestigious scientific research centers, where the scale and complexity of experimentation eludes most of us. Through the photographs in Nature & Politics, Thomas Struth explores our relationship with science and technology, the way we collectively defy nature and our inextinguishable desire to push back the limits of human knowledge.
Renowned for his photographic work since the 1970s, Struth is driven by the idea that art should “show what others don't see.” With Nature & Politics, he has developed a unique body of works taken in places of advanced technology rarely accessible to the public, such as physics institutes, pharmaceutical factories, space stations, arsenals, and operating rooms. Since 2019 he has been able to enter the various sites of CERN, the world's largest particle physics center, located on either side of the French-Swiss border near Geneva.
Thomas Struth in conversation with Florian Ebner
Florian Ebner, curator and head of department, Photography Cabinet of Centre Pompidou, talks with Thomas Struth on the impetus, inspiration and process behind his exhibition Nature & Politics, which was on view at Marian Goodman Gallery Paris from 25 May - 26 July 2024.
Thomas Struth, born 1954 in Geldern, Germany, lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. Recent comprehensive exhibitions of his work include Figure Ground, his largest show to date, which was presented at Haus der Kunst in 2017 in Munich before traveling to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 2019, as well as Nature & Politics presented successively at the Folkwang Museum in Essen, the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, the High Museum in Atlanta, the Moody Center for the Arts in Houston, the St. Louis Museum of Art and the MAST Foundation in Bologna between 2016 and 2019.
Recently, Struth has had solo exhibitions at the Hilti Art Foundation, Vaduz, Lichtenstein (2019), Aspen Museum of Art, United States (2018) and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2014). The major retrospective Photographs 1978-2010 traveled from Kunsthaus Zürich (2010) to K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2011) and from Whitechapel Gallery, London (2012) to Museu Serralves, Porto (2011-2012). His photographs have also toured the world in international group shows, including Capturing the moment at Tate Modern London (2023/2024) and … et labora at Fondation Vincent van Gogh in Arles (2019/2020), among others. Struth also participated in Common Ground, the Venice Architecture Biennale (2012), Future Dimension, the Venice Biennale (1990) and Documenta IX (1992).
Struth's artworks are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate in London and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others.