Thomas Ruff (1958, Zell am Harmersbach, Germany) has been attracting international recognition since the late 1980s as a member of the so-called Düsseldorf School, in which he integrated a group of young student photographers of Bernd and Hilla Becher in the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie since the late 1970s, known for their experimental and conceptual approach to photography (together with Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Candida Höfer). Ruff, who now lives and works in Düsseldorf, is the one who has moved further away from the teachers' style and forged a distinctive approach to photography through different strategies such as the use of colour, scale-up, and large format printing, image manipulation (from more antiquated laboratory techniques to more advanced digital manipulation). Bringing an unavoidable contribution to the history of contemporary photography, his vast work is composed of rigorous and heterogeneous series, from a set of portraits, frontal and systematic, similar to passport-type portraits, but photographed and printed in large format (in the early 1980s), empty domestic interiors (Interiors, 1979-1983), images of blurred pornography (Nudes, since 1999), different manipulated pre-existing images of the sky and space (Sterne, 1989-1992 and ma. r.s, 2011-2012), to other images found online and enlarged by the artist. Due to the thematic diversity, the versatility of the work processes, and the technical experimentation, his work explores the various dimensions and potentialities of photography as a medium and examines different classical photographic genres - portrait, nude, landscape, architecture - becoming a reference for the following generations.
His works are part of collections such as Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Gallery London, Kunstmuseum Basel, Museum of Modern Art in New York. Some recent solo exhibitions have taken place in institutions such as the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin); Serralves Museum (Porto); Tate Liverpool; Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico City); Busan Metropolitan Art Museum; Moderna Museet (Stockholm); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga; Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago); Castello di Rivoli (Turin); Kunsthalle Dusseldorf; Victoria and Albert Museum (London); Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto). A major retrospective entitled Thomas Ruff: Photographs 1979-2017 was presented at the Whitechapel Gallery (London).
CB, novembro 2020
