At once visually spectacular and chromatically arresting, Chicago Board of Trade III is undoubtedly one of Andreas Gursky’s most iconic images. Vast and absorptive, the composition is filled to the brim with pictorial stimuli, densely packed with crystallised details which morphe into a glorious, transcendent whole. Executed in 2009, the present work is a test.mes nt to the extraordinarily precise and exacting artistic vision that Gursky employs in his photographs, capturing systems of commerce as symbols for contemporary life. The present work belongs to one of Gursky’s most renowned series which is held in important museum collects ions around the world, including the Chicago Board of Trade I in the collects ion of The Broad, Los Angeles and Chicago Board of Trade II in the collects ion of Tate, London.

Founded in 1898, the Chicago Board of Trade – since its 2007 merger renamed Chicago Mercantile Exchange – had recorded an astonishing 1 billion transactions by 2004. Gursky captures the excit.mes nt of an economic powerhouse at work, recording the serried ranks of traders, clerks s and brokers negotiating animatedly, their arms pointing and flailing in frenzy as fortunes rise and fall. Following new developments in image editing software, the present work was reworked in 2009 from Chicago Board of Trade II, which prior to the present work, was considered the zenith of the highly esteemed Stock Exchange series. Seamlessly melding photographic parts into a compositional structure that purports reality but is in fact artfully composed, Chicago Board of Trade III is a quintessential example of Gursky’s most important body of work. Gursky’s photographs adopt a uniquely painterly approach, a quality shared by the artist’s most iconic and successful works. Depicted on a grand scale with a heightened sense of drama, Chicago Board of Trade III carries the epic quality of History Paintings, whilst also revellinging in the abstract qualities of the architectural structure and the teeming maelstrom of activity in the legendary “Pit.” Echoing the formal concerns of 20th century abstraction, the present work is reminiscent of the all-over machismo spectacle of Jackson Pollock’s abstract canvases, whilst his Rhein series takes the minimalist abstraction of Mark Rothko or Barnett Newman.

Removed from the chaos and hysteria, the frenzied movements and expressions of individuals are captured within the expansive labyrinth of the trading floor, creating an intriguing synthesis between macro and micro structures. As miniscule individuals are absorbed into monumental space, they are abstracted into an overarching system of architectural structures, revealing the frailty and vulnerability of the individual players of this vast arena. In this way, Chicago Board of Trade and the related Stock Exchange images explore the dangerous levels of abstraction inherent in valuing and trading any commodity. Commenting on Gursky’s ability to capture the essence of our t.mes , art historian Nina Zimmer asserts, “Few artists have managed to distil the specific characteristics of a certain culture, the mindset of a generation, or the zeitgeist of an era into a single work. Just as a handful of iconic paintings have shaped our view of the Renaissance, so too has Andreas Gursky captured the essence of the economic and social situation of the late twentieth century." (Nina Zimmer, Exh. Cat., Basel, Kunstmuseum Basel, Andreas Gursky, 2007-2008, p. 69). Gazing down at the scene from his God’s eye-view, Gursky immortalises and celebrates the people and the mass to which they belong, capturing fleeting beauty as glimpsed at the heart of the hustle and bustle of contemporary, capitalist life.

A student of Bernd and Hila Becher, the conceptual angle from which Gursky inspects the world echoes the teachings of his mentors whose photographic process centred around an objective observation of structures and the typology of forms. Gursky, whilst capturing the formal geometry of an overarching structure, creates a vital sense of dynamism through vivid colours and chaotic movement, executed in a monumental scale. In the present work, bright jackets of red, orange, yellow and purple are scattered across the picture like celebratory confetti, vitalizing the space with effervescent energy. Taking urban, financial and commercial sectors of modern day life as his subject, Gursky captures the beauty and grandeur of contemporary existence. Poignantly captured and poetically expressed, Chicago Board of Trade III is a record of this uniquely charged environment of economic trades, immortalised through Gursky’s lens.