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Gursky Photos at White Cube Gallery

Art // Jim // 26th May 2007

Never being blessed with a great sense of direction, there are some places that make me even more directionally confused than others. The Bullring in Birmingham is a good example as is the one-way system of Northampton, out in front however has to be the area around Green Park in London.

You could give me a map, compass, squad of orienteering champions and one of those GPS navigation devices and there is still probably more chance of me becoming an enduring star of musical theatre than there is of me finding my way successfully around SW1. So a scruffily drawn biro route with two road names on probably wasn’t the best preparation really.

I’m wandering around what turns out to be Ryder Street when a very well to do young lady walking a dog so small that it is probably on Richard Gere’s Christmas list approaches. “Excuse me,” I say, trying desperately not to look like a mugger/sex pest/big issue seller, “Do you know where the White Cube gallery in Mason’s Yard is?” I attempt some sort of friendly smile. “Fack Orf” she snaps, not breaking stride. Oh yes, I’ve still got it.

After realising that I was on the wrong road totally I somehow manage to reach the gleaming edifice of the White Cube gallery and stroll in. There is a really bored looking bloke staring into space on the reception desk. Still not sure that I have got things right I ask “Is this where the Gursky photos are mate?” as the words leave my mouth I realise that there are a load of leaflets about the exhibition right in front of me and the photos themselves are on the wall just past beyond the entrance. Reception bloke stops looking bored in order to switch to a scornful glance and mutter “Yes, it is on this floor and downstairs”.

Right then Jim, how to try and make this slightly awkward situation even more uncomfortable? Hmmmm, how about asking, “Is it, like, free?” a little bit too loudly and in a slightly dim-sounding voice? Yeah, that’ll do the trick. Reception bloke looks at me with raw, unreserved hatred, and then goes back to staring into space. “Yes” he mutters incidentally about a minute later with all the enthusiasm of a man who is heavily indebted to an illegal gambling consortium, and then when Jim Davidson needs a new kidney turns out to be the only tissue match in the entire world.

Pyongyang: Regimented, despot

Realising that the two of us are never going to be friends, I wander round to the gallery room to look at the new pictures by genius German photographer Andreas Gursky. I first heard about him on a TV programme a few years ago and then looked up his work on the internet. Gursky takes massive pictures of large scale subjects often involving huge levels of detail and deep perspective. You might have seen his huge pictures of the chaotic looking Chicago Board of Trade or the incredibly dense and slightly scary 99 cent, a view across the parallel aisles of a really, really big shop.

I like his pictures because although they often contain loads of people or slightly chaotic detail, the huge scale and structure inherent always suggests to me that they are a reminder that we are all trapped in some form of structure or system that we don’t necessarily perceive or can affect. I also like them because frankly, they look absolutely fucking brilliant.

In this exhibition the first thing I see is what looks like a slightly camp collage of some flowers or something, moving closer it becomes clear that every little dot is a person holding up a card or doing gymnastics of some description in an incredibly regimented fashion. This is an image from the Arirang festival held in Pyongyang, North Korea every year to celebrate the birth of their former dictator Kim Il-Sung (Turn ons: Communism, pretending to be a god, murderous purges. Turn offs: South Korea, democracy, puppies). The scale and impact of these photos is shocking, thousands upon thousands of people behaving in a perfectly synchronised way to repeat the propaganda of a despot who has been dead for over a decade. Orwell would have had an absolute field day with it.

The Pyongyang pictures give you pause for thought while you gape at them, while some of the other pictures nearby are just visually stunning, rather than a bit sinister. There is an image of a huge cylindrical cavern used for some sort of scientific purposes, the walls covered with golden discs and a lake at its base. It looks completely unreal, like something out of a James Bond film – I’m guessing that the cavern is massive but there’s no way of really telling until you notice the tiny bloke in a rowing boat on the lake totally dwarfed by his surroundings. Gulp.

Kamiokande: Cavern, gulp

I want to try and take a photo but there are a few people knocking about and I don’t want to give the geezer behind the desk the excuse to set the hounds on me. I slope downstairs to the basement to see the rest of the exhibition, this section of things is dominated by the F1 Boxenstopp series of pictures, four portraits of the pit-stops at a formula one race.

Each picture is basically the same, a swarm of mechanics surround the car while a group of rich looking sponsors etc gaze from what appears to be air conditioned luxury above. In the background there are the ghostly figures of the driver’s supermodel other halves, they all look somewhere between very bored and very concerned. Once again despite the chaos there is something incredibly organised and stagey about the images (I think I read that some elements had been digitally composed), they are so clear and large that they actually start to seem a bit unreal.

Photos of formula one pit stops should be about as exciting as an exhibition of old bits of string, held in Sheerness on a rainy Sunday afternoon. But irrelevant of the subject these photos are so packed with detail and a strange other-worldly atmosphere that I stand gawping at them for long enough for some Japanese students to irritably ask me to move along.

On the way out there is another Arirang photo, thousands and thousands of little girls doing handstands. I can spot the odd one who hasn’t quite managed it and spend a moment worrying that they were probably dragged out and shot straight after.

Leave the White Cube feeling glad I got to see the exhibition before it finished and have a bit of a stroll around town before trying to sort out some drinks later, hang about, someone appears to be squeezing my arse. Oh great - It’s some middle aged Asian lady, I am perplexed. She laughs, has another crack at my bum and then tries to encourage me to join her in a nearby casino using chuckling and pointing as her main tools of persuasion. I look around for the hidden cameras and back away nervously, feeling more confused than I can ever remember in my entire, fairly confusing, life.

HEADING

Gursky at White Cube

Load of info and pictures at the gallery web site

Gursky Pictures

A whole load of them from a German web site. Danke.

Arirang Festival

More on the spectacular, but chilling birthday bash for Kim Il-Sung