Beschreibung:

Thomas Struth Paradise 1 (Pilgrim Sands), Daintree/ Australia 1998 Color coupler print in artist’s wooden frame. 93 3/4 x 75 in. (238.1 x 190.5 cm). Signed “Thomas Struth” on the artist’s label adhered to the reverse of the mount. This work is from an edition of ten.
Provenance Marian Goodman Gallery, New York Exhibited Denver Art Museum, Museum Selections, April 29 – July 9, 2000; Tokyo, National Museum of Modern Art, October 3-December 9, 2000 and Kyoto, National Museum of Modern Art, Thomas Struth My Portrait, p. 113 (another example exhibited; illustrated); University of Salamanca, Centro de Fotografia, February 27-April 14, 2002 and Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, June 14-September 8, 2003, Thomas Struth New Pictures from Paradise, n.p., cat. no. 7301 (another example exhibited; illustrated); Dallas Museum of Art, May 12- August 18, 2002; Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art, September 15, 2002-January 5, 2003 and Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, June 28-September 28, 2003, Thomas Struth 1977-2002, p. 19 (another example exhibited; illustrated) Literature M. Ichikawa, R. Masuda, K. Suzuki and National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, eds., Thomas Struth My Portrait, Tokyo, 2000, p. 113 (illustrated); D. Eklund, A. Goldstein, M.M. Hambourg, C. Wylie, Thomas Struth 1977-2002, New Haven and London, 2002, p. 19 (illustrated); I.Hartmann and H.R. Reust, Thomas Struth New Pictures from Paradise, Munich, 2002, n.p., cat. no. 7301 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay “My approach to the jungle pictures might be said to be new, in that my initial impulses were pictorial and emotional, rather than theoretical. They are "unconscious places" and thus seem to follow my early city pictures. The photographs taken in the jungles of Australia, Japan, and China, as well as in the California woods, contain a wealth of delicately branched information, which makes it almost impossible, especially in large formats, to isolate single forms… I don't understand why so many people equate the notion of paradise with escapism. Paradise was never a place one could enter--though, in this global moment, escapism is no longer an issue either. The disappearance of the social debate about utopia, which the title "Paradise" alludes to, is an impoverishment and banalization. I focus exclusively on the experience of proximity. Nowadays the human being is reduced to a consumer and therefore to an instrument of a global economic mechanism. I, on the other hand, am interested in peculiarity, the individual ways of people and what goes on inside them when their historical bearings are disoriented. Certain aspects of cities now strike me as being straight out of science fiction, such as a particular intersection in Tokyo's Shibuya district, where everything revolves around the increase and intensification of information. Then I notice a growing confinement, not only in a physical sense but also in terms of vital energy. We must look elsewhere if we want to expand the individual's space. Understanding and communication have increasingly become inner processes originating in silence. As sources of air and space, the jungle pictures offer me an even deeper purchase on another of my ongoing subjects--the city,” (Thomas Struth quoted in “Thomas Struth: Talks About his Paradise series – A Thousand Words – Photographer”, Artforum, May 2002). Read More