SCARTI

Recently I visited the newly refurbished Hayward Gallery,as a guest of my pal Julien Lesage.We attended the current and fashionable exhibition of the photographer Andreas Gursky.It would be reasonable to describe this experience as an event of significant scale.Much has already been written and proposed about Gursky’s use of scale in his practice...and I must say that I found this to be one of the exhibition’s most concentred qualities.When studying the works on display...both large and small...my attention was arrested time and again by the Telescopic nature of the compositions. Many feature individuals dominated by the landscape or cityscape that they are set in.Curiously the effect is to de-individualise these beings when viewed from the so called correct distance. On approaching to a closer investigation the effect is  somehow reversed and they become,despite their crowded surroundings,micro landscapes of their own.This brought to mind those images of the Mandelbrot Set which exhibit elaborate and infinitely complicated bio-mimicry and which  reveal progressively ever-finer recursive detail at increasing magnifications.It’s no secret that Gursky constructs these images on a digital platform...and which conventional wisdom implies a certain emotional coldness.However...like the music of his compatriots Kraftwerk...the effect on me was quite the opposite. I found myself greatly moved  by these images of the human condition...and was reminded once again of the brevity and finite nature of life... and mankind’s brave and futile attempts to rebuke that fact while we are here...