The network of images transforms the foyer into a setting made up of insights interacting in surprising ways. The visual dialogue points to inventiveness, enthusiasm, responsibility, diversity and renewal.Thomas Struth
Coordinates – a curated Siemens history
At the initiative of the Siemens Arts Program, a vibrant dialogue between the company Siemens and the artist Thomas Struth has evolved in this project. The reflective exploration of the company’s past, present and future can now be experienced in a new way through an outside perspective – through the artistic prism.
It is a pleasure to have an artist like Thomas Struth intensively exploring the conditions surrounding our global company: from the extensive stores of archival photographs documenting the history of Siemens, Struth has made a carefully prepared and newly presented selection which he situates within the context of his own work.
The coordinates of this selection from the archives correspond to thematic, geographical and chronological axes. Struth has particularly focused his gaze on the people who have shaped and changed Siemens’ profile over the centuries, on every continent and in various fields of research and business. He thus enables these documents to communicate with his own works on a thematic and visual level.
Thomas Struth has intensively concerned himself with selected Siemens locations, such as the company’s Corporate Technology lab and switchgear manufacturing plant (Schaltwerk) in Berlin, Siemens Healthcare facilities in Erlangen and Forchheim (both Germany), and the Siemens Process Industries and Drives factory in Alpharetta, Georgia (USA).
The installation invites viewers both outside and inside the company to develop a new kind of relationship with Siemens, because a story of personal everyday life lies within every single image of the historical collage. The network of images repeatedly asks: Where do we come from? Where are we now? And where do we want to go? The dialogue between the past and the present forms new connections and creates space for creativity and innovation. (Coordinates – a curated Siemens history, June 2016)
The artist Thomas Struth was born in Geldern (Germany) in 1954. Struth`s work is represented in museums and collections around the world.
His most recent solo exhibitions include Thomas Struth: Nature & Politics (2016; Museum Folkwang, Essen, and Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin) and Thomas Struth: Photographs (2014; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
For over a decade, technology’s effect on our lives has formed a central thematic area in Struth’s work dealing with our age’s image of humanity and the world.
More impressions from the installation
