Retrospective

Thomas Ruff’s work is an encyclopaedic encapsulation of today’s photography. His subjects extend from portraits to galaxies, from the micro- to the macrocosm. His approach is simultaneously scientific and political, while he is also sensitive to shifts in the approaches of contemporary visual culture. The techniques he has employed represent all major steps in the development of photography, including digital image making. His monumental enlargements are expressive lessons in the method, or what he calls the grammar, of photography.

An outstanding member of the generation that started to work in the beginning of the 80s, Thomas Ruff started in the company of Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Candida Höffer and Axel Hütte, the so-called Dusseldorf School. It was the first generation to learn photography at an academy of art. As a young artist, he saw the 1977 Dokumenta at Kassel (where he would exhibit in 1992), which presented the photography of 150 years, and was thus a first-hand witness of the elevation of the art form into the canon. While he first gained renown as a maker of portraits, he later addressed a great many other subjects, always keeping in focus the question of the medium.

In the show we represent his art through the most important series to date: jpeg; Machines; Substrate; Nudes; Portraits; Other Portraits; Nights; Newspaper Photographs; Stars, including the newest Zycels.