Thomas Ruff

See also: Ruff

Thomas Ruff , born in 1958 with Zell amndt Harmersbach is a German photographer with the international reputation. He lives and works with Düsseldorf.

Thomas Ruff studied the photography of 1977 with 1985 with Bernd and Hilla Becher with the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Ruff quotes the names of Walker Evans, Eugene Atget, Karl Bloßfeld, Stephen Shore and William Eggleston like her principal artistic influences. Of 2000 with 2005 Ruff teaches photography in Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (by taking again the pulpit of the Beaker).

During its studies in Düsseldorf, Ruff develops its method of photography in conceptual series. Its main subject of study, at the beginning, was the interior of the houses and apartments German, with their typical characteristics of the Fifties and 70 (photographs of rooms and details of design). It continued with stereotypes of the same kind, buildings and portraits of his friends and relations. Those are shown without any expression of the least emotion, in large size and high-resolution with many details but in the style of the photographs of identity of the passports. In an exchange with Philip Pocock ( Newspaper for Contemporary Art , 1993), Ruff mentions a bond between these portraits and the method of observation of the police force in Germany in the Seventies.

The portraits of buildings of Ruff give the feeling to be made in series and to be like " isolés". They are modified numerically to remove the details which would obstruct the reading of it - a method of typing which gives to the image a character of example (Ruff: " This type of building more or less represents the ideology and of the economy of the Federal Republic of Germany during the thirty last années"). The method employed by Ruff is also standardized as for the light, the prospect and the visual angle.

These series were followed in 1989 by images of the sky seen of night, which are not based on photographs of Ruff. In the years 1992 with 1995, it produced stereotypes of night (landscapes and buildings) with a device of vision of night which was voluntarily connected with those used by the soldiers and the spies. Of 1994 with 1996, Ruff produced stereotypes in Stéréoscopie. Later during the Nineties, Ruff made series " images of journaux" : Ruff employed again images which it had not produced in a style close to those of photograph of sky the night that it had produced before. It used newspaper cuttings increased without their original legends.

In 2003 Ruff published a collection of naked, with texts of Houellebecq]. The images of Ruff were based on pornographic images resulting from the Web which had been worked over again numerically and darkened. This series received a mitigated reception.

Exposures (selection)

1988 Schloss Hardenberg, Velbert, Germany
1988 Porticus Frankfurt, Germany
1992 Documented IX, Kassel, Germany
1995 Venice Biennale, Italy
2000 Museum Haus Lange, Frankfurt, Germany
2001 Chub Museum, Rotterdam, Netherlands
2001 Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany
2002 Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany; Städtische Gallery Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany
2002 Artium Central Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporaneo, Vitoria (Gasteiz), Spain
2003 Put of Serralves-Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Oporto, Portugal
2003 Tate Liverpool, Great Britain
2003 Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, Germany
2003 Busan Metropolitan Art Museum, Busan, South Korea

External bonds

(in) Thomas Ruff At Johnen + Schöttle
(in) Thomas Ruff artnews and exhibitions

Sources

Random links: