Andreas Gursky · Landscapes of the Present From May 5 to June 18, 2022, Gagosian Gallery New York presents a series of recent works by German photographer Andreas Gursky. Image: Andreas Gursky, “Eisläufer”, 2021, 84 ⅝ × 160 ¼ × 2 ½ inches (215 × 407 × 6.2 cm), edition of 6 © Andreas Gursky/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York Andreas Gursky (Leipzig, b.1955) is one of the best-known and most influential photographers of recent decades, famous for his large-scale landscapes and urban scenes. His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and retrospectives, including those at SFMOMA in San Francisco in 2003, and at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Kunstmuseum Basel in 2009. His photographs have also achieved enormous success in the art market, and as of this writing, one of Gursky's most famous photographs, "Rhein II," is the most expensive photograph ever auctioned. Precisely, "Rhein II" is the direct reference to one of the works in the exhibition, "Rhein III," in which the river is shown in a period of drought. According to the gallery, "Gursky’s concern with ecology is also evident in ‘Streif’ (2021), which depicts a downhill ski slope in Kitzbühel, Austria, in January 2020. While the site is recognizable, and features the colored boundary markings common to such tracks, the panoramic shot is in part a digital construction. This visual artifice echoes the unnatural character of the slope itself, which is maintained by using environmentally damaging snow cannons." In "Eisläufer" (2021), Gursky shows the frozen waters of a flood in Düsseldorf, while "Salinas" (2021) depicts the sunset over the salt flats of Ibiza, Spain. The work is described by the gallery in a very evocative way: "To the radiant sky above the site, the striking coloration of which evokes Éric Rohmer’s film ‘Le Rayon vert’ (The Green Ray, 1986), Gursky has added the linear cloud formation generated by a passing airliner—a subtle reminder of recent international conflicts. “By incorporating a contrail like that into an image of perfect beauty,” he tells writer Max Dax in Gagosian Quarterly, “I’m toying with the tension between sublimity and destruction.'"

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