Thomas Struth is internationally considered one of the most important artists of his generation. His work is characterised by his long-term and careful pursuit of themes that revolve, in various guises, around the relationship between people and their environment.

His photographs, which harmonise forms of documentation and contemplation, capture today’s society through images of cultural spaces, as well as the natural world, portraiture and places of industrial and technological innovation.

The series “New Pictures from Paradise” dates from the early 2000s, the decade that saw a heightened awareness of the fragility and importance of the natural world. In these photographs, Struth aims to depict a diversity so dense that individual components are no longer identifiable to the human eye and an impression of inaccessibility prevails instead.

Struth’’s “Nature and Politics” suite of works shows us highly complex devices, structures and constructions that define our present, but are usually inaccessible to the public. These pictures tell of attempts to extend the limits of what is technically possible and to exceed natural reality through artificial worlds.

The artist’s fascination is not only about complex structures, but as well about the mental endeavour displayed by them. “I wanted to explore the process of imagination. (…) I am only concerned with how something that at first was only a thought materializes and becomes part of reality. ‘Picturing something,’ this expression already describes the brain’s ability to think in pictures” says Struth.

His photographs are about highly specialized imagination: Developments in space travel, plasma physics experiments or industrial facilities, such as oil rigs or blast furnaces, are products of the ideas and designs of experts.

Struth’s detailed views show that these overwhelmingly complex constructions are also creations – created by humans, they raise the question of how power and striving for power is documented in objects and how they then gain political importance. The pictures explore the creation, interpretation and reinterpretation of reality, memory and experience.

THOMAS STRUTH is represented by Marian Goodman Gallery and Max Hetzler Gallery.

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