Thomas Struth

We are beyond delighted to announce the eighth solo exhibition of artist Thomas Struth at the gallery.
A certain tranquility and focus inhabit the photographs of dead animals Thomas Struth took in the autopsy room of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research. The institution is dedicated to research on the human influence on our environment and examines the exact cause of death of recently deceased animals, most of which are brought in from the animal park in eastern Berlin. In his images, Struth documents that transitory moment immediately after death, when life still seems to cling to the bodies of these animals. These are post-mortem portraits. Viewing them may at first produce a sense of distress. Jittering between beauty and asperity, the images are imbued with a sublime quality via the universal question of transience. One last time, a whiff of life blows into the camera’s lens before the organic intricacies of life crumble into dead matter. What was once engrossed in power and energy is now ruled by silence.
But if we take a closer look at what we see as lifeless matter, we will soon realize that the elements’ dynamic bustle in fact knows no bounds. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva uses particle accelerators to explore what holds the universe together at its core, and how it came to be in the first place. In the second part of the exhibition in the gallery’s upper level, Thomas Struth shows new photographs of technological equipment, which he encountered at CERN as well as in the laboratories of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights (New York)—which specializes in quantum physics—and at the Space Center of IABG Ottobrunn.

Thomas Struth
Cosmic Ray Test Area, ATLAS, CERN, Meyrin 2019
Inkjet print, 183,5 x 315 cm © Thomas Struth