Specification
Material
Chromogenic print
Image size
151.5 x 190 cm
Frame size
159 x 197 cm
Edition
5 / 10
Estimate
£60,000 – £80,000
Winning Bid: £60,000
Material
Chromogenic print
Image size
151.5 x 190 cm
Frame size
159 x 197 cm
Edition
5 / 10
Estimate
£60,000 – £80,000
Space Shuttle 2. Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral 2008” depicts the “Endeavour” in the Orbiter Processing Facility N°3 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The photograph is one of the first works in Thomas Struth’s ongoing series “Nature & Politics” that begun in 2007. The series comprises images of advanced technological developments in international companies and research laboratories. Aerospace, energy production, medical research, artificial intelligence, and robotics are among the technologies of the future that interest Struth. The artist juxtaposes these photographs of technology with others depicting contemporary urban, cultural, and recreational landscapes, such as Disneyland or the Atlanta aquarium. The series explores the boundaries – and representability – of progress, globalisation, and technology. The shots are often dense metaphors of a development in which technology is no longer clearly or palpably communicable, but rather understandable in its complexity only for highly specialised experts.
Art critic Michael Fried described the work as a crucial starting point of the entire “Nature & Politics” series, as it is “establishing certain basic parameters for coming to terms with the photographs that follow”. By “taking this photograph as thematic for the series as a whole […], it also suggests that there will be no tendency in the series to shift the implied locus of agency away from human beings to the technology itself—a point driven home by the fact that this is the only one of the technology photographs to include human agents.” (quotes by Michael Fried, Nonsite. Source)
Artwork kindly donated by Thomas Struth courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler
Item condition: New