Published in Time Out Istanbul

July 2007

In the words of museum director David Elliott, it’s the show that other museums would “kill to get their hands on.” Vanessa Able goes to see whether Andreas Gursky’s exhibition at the Istanbul Modern is worth spilling blood for.

One of the big conundrums of my art school days in the UK was the analogue/digital debate. There we were, fresher class of ’99, in charity shop chic and circus haircuts, gathered around a giant print of Andreas Gursky’s Alpine skiers at the Serpentine Gallery, squinting into the detail of the print and knotting our brows to the then infinitely perplexing question posed by our tutor: “Do you think he’s Photoshop-ed it?”

A decade on, the work of artists like Gursky and Jeff Wall have integrated digital methods so seamlessly with the photographic process that questions of reality and authenticity have become stale and are no longer really the issue. Technology and technique have developed to a point where digital images can create the same sharpness and saturation of their analogous predecessors. It’s an era of hyper-reality, and as artists and audiences ease themselves into digital literacy, the nagging issues of realism are finally sinking into the ground.

Andreas Gursky has been a frontrunner of this process: the display of his works from the past two decades currently adorning the walls at the Istanbul Modern charts a journey through a shrinking globalised world: industry, culture, politics and technology merge in his encyclopaedic vision that lays out landscapes and epic viewpoints in pictures so skilfully composed as to thoroughly shake up your innards.

His latest work, a four-part tableau of pit stop manoeuvres taken at Formula 1 tracks all over the world, is a testament as to just how far Gursky has plunged down the rabbit hole to the hyper-real: it is his first fully digital foray, using constructed imagery shot in digital format, composed and lit in a manner evocative and worthy of Caravaggio. The uniformed teams, leather-clad and helmeted, look like creatures from another world, as they emerge from a gloomy background to service the obscured quiescent vehicles, while onlookers gawp down from behind a glass gallery on an upper level, snapping away with their pocket cameras like visitors at a zoo.

Gursky’s journey into all things hyper- and uber- may initially appear to contradict his previously stated his aim of producing “the essence of reality”. Apparently the same goal as all photographers since the days of Luis Daguerre, yet the pursuit of reality’s essence has changed from a monocular snapshot of a slice of time to a multi-faceted collage of fragments of time and space. Look at the two pieces titled ‘Pyongyang’: Gursky was given permission to travel to North Korea to photograph the Arirang Festival, a massive choreographed event staged by 50,000 acrobats moving simultaneously against a backdrop of 30,000 children holding up coloured cards. Through his elevated angle, wide shots and use of incredibly involved detail, pasted together from several sessions of shooting, he pushes the event, which in itself is hyper- conformist, past the boundaries of representation and into the realm of a carefully constructed hyper-reality. This overblown conformity of the image might well be the true essence of the event.

Also included in the show is the celebrated ‘99 Cent II Diptychon’ that earned Gursky the title of the biggest-selling living photographer when it was snapped up for a cool $3.3 million back in February of this year. Gursky is bored of the constant reminders: “I am always confronted with this information,” he says, as though the sale has been more of a burden and impediment to him. For a man who started his working life as a cabbie, he is modest about his achievements; it may not be all about the money as far as his bank account’s concerned, but his subject matter has dealt with the theme over and over through the years.

The energetic thrust of the Chicago Board of Trade; the minimalist decadence of a set of empty shelves inside a Prada store; the noisy interior of a Siemens plant in Karlsruhe; and a landscape of landfill trash surrounding a small Mexican settlement: this is globalisation from every angle.

Politics and commentary aside for now, I won’t refrain from finishing with the B-issue: beauty. Gursky’s vast images really are sublime: pleasing to the eye in the most traditional sense of visual harmony, as well as the subtle singularities that catch your imagination off-guard. ‘Kamiokande’, one of the show’s most captivating pieces, depicts a neutrino observatory buried deep underground in the Mozumi mine in Kamioka-cho, Japan. This immense chamber built to detect the smallest known particles in the universe appears as a mystifying tower from the midst of a fairy tale. The shaft of the interior is lined with photomultiplier tubes that are protected by metallic spheres, while two tiny figures standing in small boats near the bottom of the composition float upon the 50,000 tons of purified water, looking up in awe at the vast structure that surrounds them: it’s nothing less than breathtaking.

Gursky has said that he can’t tell whether his current stage of practice is a beginning, a middle, or an end. Development is blind, and he is working on the very cusp of technology, which we as viewers are learning to read and absorb in step. But what’s clear from his work and sales record is that the digital arts have not only been fully integrated into the art market, they have also gained a strong foothold in the critical and aesthetic arena of fine art. Good luck to him, however it turns out.