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Lot Essay
When I started my work, I felt that I would always be dependent on the physical world. It seemed that it was more interesting to be a painter working in the studio, where one can decide what to do, how to develop the compositions. I am not a painter, but I have the same freedom now.
— Andreas Gursky
Andreas Gursky's striking and sublime representation of the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok I, executed in 2011, exemplifies the artist's ability to transcend the medium of photography through an almost mystical, abstracted composition. A narrow ripple of light accentuates the tempestuous surface of the fast-flowing water, creating a stark delineation in the dark and murky river. Reminding the viewer of the toxic reality of human life’s toll on nature, a soiled, floating mass-produced mattress at lower right interrupts the undulating, vast and unknowable water mass. Following a visit to Thailand in the spring of 2011, Gursky embarked on a series that would reveal the ecological disorder evidenced by the urban waterway that had become a dumping ground for man-made pollution and detritus. Soon after Gursky photographed this subject, widespread flooding devasted the surrounding areas in Thailand. While seductive and shimmering upon first glance, reminiscent of Clyfford Still’s visceral and dramatic coalescing swathes of paint, or Mark Rothko’s dueling and ominous forces of color, Bangkok I acts as a foreboding warning of environmental decay.
— Andreas Gursky
Andreas Gursky's striking and sublime representation of the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok I, executed in 2011, exemplifies the artist's ability to transcend the medium of photography through an almost mystical, abstracted composition. A narrow ripple of light accentuates the tempestuous surface of the fast-flowing water, creating a stark delineation in the dark and murky river. Reminding the viewer of the toxic reality of human life’s toll on nature, a soiled, floating mass-produced mattress at lower right interrupts the undulating, vast and unknowable water mass. Following a visit to Thailand in the spring of 2011, Gursky embarked on a series that would reveal the ecological disorder evidenced by the urban waterway that had become a dumping ground for man-made pollution and detritus. Soon after Gursky photographed this subject, widespread flooding devasted the surrounding areas in Thailand. While seductive and shimmering upon first glance, reminiscent of Clyfford Still’s visceral and dramatic coalescing swathes of paint, or Mark Rothko’s dueling and ominous forces of color, Bangkok I acts as a foreboding warning of environmental decay.