Medium: Imprinted on photopaper
Edition 100 + 20 A.P.
Image size: 40 x 30 cm
Paper size: 50 x 40 cm
Signed, dated and numbered
Born in southwest Germany in 1958, Thomas Ruff has long been viewed as a key figure of the Düsseldorf School of photography, having studied under such greats as Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Düsseldorf Art Academy (where he later taught). Ruff earns his reputation in part through his continual innovation, leading him to explore in recent years the experimental possibilities offered by digital image-making and camera-less photography.
The exhibition at Zurich‘s Mai 36 consisted of new works from Ruff’s “Photograms” and “Negatives” series. The “Photograms” on view are huge prints, with six pieces nearly 8 by 6 feet and one even larger work in landscape format. They are glorious yet enigmatic images, and no wonder, for Ruff creates them with an elaborate process he devised himself. Whereas Surrealists like Man Ray generated monochrome photograms by placing objects on light-sensitive paper and exposing the materials to the sun, Ruff reimagines the photogram as an entirely digital technique. Using neither physical objects nor light-sensitive backgrounds, Ruff instead programs the vectors of a form into animation software customarily used to make 3-D films. Within that digital environment the form is subjected to numerous virtual light sources of different intensities and colors, resulting in the final image. The operation requires mammoth computing power, and the seven photograms in the main exhibition space necessitated the use of the supercomputer JUROPA at a scientific research center in Jülich, Germany. Out of the resulting images, phg.09_II (all works 2014) most resembles the series’ Surrealist forebears, with its white, coglike shapes casting pale shadows on a black background. Elsewhere, phg.02_II gave away next to nothing about its initial subject: yellow, tawny orange, pale green and gray refractions and shadows articulate a reverse S-shape that surges from the bottom right to the top left with a sort of Futurist dynamism.
Thomas Ruff’s photography embraces the full material possibilities of the medium. The artist uses a range of techniques spanning from antiquated darkroom production to digital manipulation as he explores authenticity, appropriation, and the boundaries of photography as an art form; his interests align more with conceptual art than with documentary or staged photography, and his subjects span portraiture, landscapes, nudes, architecture, and abstract forms.
Ruff came to prominence as part of the Düsseldorf School, a loosely affiliated group of photographers who studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher. The seriality of his subjects takes inspiration from the Bechers’ embrace of “typologies” in their own work. Ruff has exhibited in New York, London, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, and many other cities. His work belongs in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Moderna Museet, the Guggenheim Museum, and the S.M.A.K. Museum of Contemporary Art, among others.
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