Andreas Gursky - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Tuesday, March 7, 2017 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance

    Sprüth Magers, Berlin
    Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2011

  • Exhibited

    Krefeld, Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Andreas Gursky. Werke. Works 80-08, 12 October 2008 - 25 January 2009, Stockholm, Moderna Museet; Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery, exh. cat., p. 243 (another example exhibited and illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    Executed in 2008, Jumeirah Palm is an iconic example of Gursky’s linear and homogenous photographic work. Seen from afar, this piece is dominated by repetitive horizontal stripes of gradient hues of blue and grey. Only once the viewer steps closer, rows of uniform luxury villas shot from an aerial perspective reveal themselves. As the title suggests, this large scale work was shot on the Palm Island in Dubai. The photograph emphasises the simultaneous co-existence of order and chaos, and the contrast between the natural and the built environment. The digitally modified pattern created by the artist generates transitive parallels between his practice and human behavioural tendencies to modify our own natural habitat.

    Much of Gursky’s work depicts transformed landscapes, urban settings and populated areas which create a dialogue on uncomfortable and current issues such as inequality, globalisation and consumerism. Stricken by the presence and power in his work, critic Calvin Tomkins described Gursky as one of the ‘two masters’ of the famous Düsseldorf school, which Gursky attended in the 1980s under the tutelage of Bernd and Hilla Becher. It is during these years at the Kunstakademie that the photographic duo had an impact on Gursky, who developed a passion for documenting heavy industrial machinery and buildings with a similar methodological approach to the one used by Bernd and Hilla Becher. During his university years Gursky met Laurenz Berges, Thomas Ruff and Axel Hütte, and shared a former electricity station as a studio. It is only later in his career that Gursky mastered the ‘poly-ocular perspective’, which primarily submerges the viewer with overwhelming information. This technique is used often as a trade mark by the artist to induce an overwhelming emotion or sense of anxiety for the viewer. This uneasy sensation has been compared by multiple critics to the effect of globalisation on the mass population.

26

Jumeirah Palm

signed 'Andreas Gursky' on a label affixed to the reverse
Colour coupler print in artist's frame
image 284.2 x 185 cm (111 7/8 x 72 7/8 in.)
framed 307 x 207 cm (120 7/8 x 81 1/2 in.)

Executed in 2008. This work is number 2 from an edition of 6.

Estimate
£200,000 - 300,000 

Sold for £281,000

Contact Specialist
Henry Highley
Specialist, Head of Evening Sale
+ 44 20 7318 4061

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale

London Auction 8 March 2017 5pm GMT