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Lot Essay
'The camera’s enormous distance from these figures means they become de-individualized ... So I am never interested in the individual but in the human species and its environment'
–Andreas Gursky
Spanning five metres in width, Andreas Gursky’s Cocoon II offers a vast, immersive spectacle. With its sea of revellers surging as one, it exemplifies the artist’s ability to distil abstract order and crystalline detail from the chaos of human existence. Executed in 2008, and included in the artist’s major retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Krefeld that year, the work belongs to a small series of photographs depicting the former Cocoon Club in Frankfurt, owned and designed by the artist’s friend DJ Sven Väth. The series, which includes his first self-portrait, represents a rare instance of personal reference within his oeuvre, as well as an unusually extended focus on a single subject. Currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, London – his first in the UK – Gursky is noted for his encyclopaedic approach to arenas of global activity. Since the 1980s, he has captured airports, factories, stock exchanges and other sites of congregation with otherworldly clarity. From the early 1990s, the artist began to experiment with digital manipulation techniques, merging multiple shots in order to emphasise hidden linear patterns and rhythms. Fuelled by the artist’s love of techno and trance music, the German rave scene became a source of particular fascination, and the present work may be seen to extend from earlier masterpieces such as Union Rave (1995) and his celebrated May Day series (1997-2006). Captured from above, the distinctive honeycombed walls of the club and the swarming hive of dancers are brought into undulating unison, with specks of colour picked out like accented beats. The effect, much like the music itself, is one of sublime synchronicity.
–Andreas Gursky
Spanning five metres in width, Andreas Gursky’s Cocoon II offers a vast, immersive spectacle. With its sea of revellers surging as one, it exemplifies the artist’s ability to distil abstract order and crystalline detail from the chaos of human existence. Executed in 2008, and included in the artist’s major retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Krefeld that year, the work belongs to a small series of photographs depicting the former Cocoon Club in Frankfurt, owned and designed by the artist’s friend DJ Sven Väth. The series, which includes his first self-portrait, represents a rare instance of personal reference within his oeuvre, as well as an unusually extended focus on a single subject. Currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, London – his first in the UK – Gursky is noted for his encyclopaedic approach to arenas of global activity. Since the 1980s, he has captured airports, factories, stock exchanges and other sites of congregation with otherworldly clarity. From the early 1990s, the artist began to experiment with digital manipulation techniques, merging multiple shots in order to emphasise hidden linear patterns and rhythms. Fuelled by the artist’s love of techno and trance music, the German rave scene became a source of particular fascination, and the present work may be seen to extend from earlier masterpieces such as Union Rave (1995) and his celebrated May Day series (1997-2006). Captured from above, the distinctive honeycombed walls of the club and the swarming hive of dancers are brought into undulating unison, with specks of colour picked out like accented beats. The effect, much like the music itself, is one of sublime synchronicity.