Production: Institut für Kunstdokumentation und Szenografie

 

 

 

Thomas Ruff was born in 1958 in Zell am Harmersbach. From 1977-85, he was a student of Bernd Becher at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie. From 2000, he lectured in photography at the said university, where he ran the ex-“Becher's class” for 6 years. He is considered one of the most important German photographers. In 1989-92 he worked on a series of stars in which he used the negatives of photographs taken by the telescope at the European Southern Observatory, which he repeatedly magnified. In other cycles (jpegs, nudes) he experiments with zooming in and out of pixels or the outdated technique of collage. In his latest series, m.a.r.s., Thomas Ruff works with topographic images of the planet Mars that were taken by satellite. He processes them as if they had been taken by an observer located there, and then treats the colours. He always takes his pictures the same way, keeping a constant distance relative to the object, a uniform image sharpness, and neutral lighting. Topics in his photographic series include: man, constellations, buildings and interiors. Each of his series is a new concept and an associated new way of creating it. He is particularly interested in analogue and digital photo production capabilities and the mixing of these two techniques. Thomas Ruff has exhibited his works in Italy during the Venice Biennale, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago ("MCA DNA"), the Tate Liverpool (retrospective), the Kunsthalle in Vienna (Oberflächen, Tiefen / Surfaces, Depths) and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm (jpegs), as well as in France, the Netherlands and South Korea.

 

 

 

23.05.2012, 19:30