Thomas Ruff: Transforming Photography

Thomas Ruff: Transforming Photography
Author:
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
Total Pages: 81
Release: 2019-09-03
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1644230178

Over the course of his three-decade career, Thomas Ruff has taken up many approaches to photography in his investigation into the status of the image in contemporary culture. In Thomas Ruff, the artist presents new work that continues his ongoing probe into the history, processes, techniques, and technology of photography. One of the most influential photographers working today, Ruff has redefined photography’s conceptual possibilities, simultaneously capturing and challenging the essence of the medium as a means for visual experience. He has investigated various photographic genres, including portraiture, the nude, and landscape and architectural photography, using both analog and digital technologies, and culling imagery from scientific archives, print media, and the internet. Presented here is a selection of Ruff’s most well-known works, as well as the newer Tripe/Ruff series, begun in 2018, which draws on negatives of India and Burma taken in the 1850s by an officer in the East India Company army. Also included is a conversation between Ruff and Okwui Enwezor, which took place at Haus der Kunst in Munich, in connection with the artist’s retrospective then on view. The conversation, published here for the first time, has been edited for this volume and examines Ruff’s artistic practice and inspiration, serving as an engaging and dynamic introduction to the artist. Published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at David Zwirner, Hong Kong, in 2019, Thomas Ruff is available in both English-only and bilingual English/traditional Chinese editions.

Jpegs

Jpegs
Author: Thomas Ruff
Publisher:
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2009
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 9781597110938

Thomas Ruff is among the most important international photographers to emerge in the last fifteen years, and one of the most enigmatic and prolific of Bernd and Hilla Bechers former students, a group that includes Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Candida Höfer, and Axel Hutte. In 2007, Ruff completed his monumental Jpegs series in which he explores the distribution and reception of images in the digital age. Starting with images he culls primarily from the Web, Ruff enlarges them to a gigantic scale, which exaggerates the pixel patterns until they become sublime geometric displays of color. Many of Ruffs works in the series focus on idyllic, seemingly untouched landscapes, and conversely, scenes of war and nature disturbed by human manipulation. Taken together, these masterworks create an encyclopedic compendium of contemporary visual culture that also actively engages the history of landscape painting. A fittingly deluxe and oversized volume, Jpegs is the first monograph dedicated exclusively to the publication of Ruffs remarkable series.

Futuro Retro

Futuro Retro
Author: Maria Svarbova
Publisher: Nhp Publishing
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2020-01-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9789187815584

Following the huge success of Swimming Pool, Mária returns with a new collection of her photography in a limited edition book.

Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff
Author: Thomas Ruff
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-03-24
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 0847845680

Thomas Ruff is acknowledged as a leading innovator in the generation of German artists that propelled photography into mainstream art. For more than two decades, he has pushed the limits of the photographic medium, harnessing technologies both old and new. Traditionally, photograms are made by placing objects onto photosensitive paper and exposing the paper to light, thereby recording the silhouettes of the objects. Captivated by this method but seeking to work beyond its limitations, Ruff collaborated with a 3-D imaging expert to design a virtual darkroom that would enable him to experiment with an infinite range of forms.Negatives are a direct result of Ruff’s photogram process; the white and slate-blue images are inverted versions of early-twentieth-century nude studies.

Nudes

Nudes
Author: Thomas Ruff
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2006-09-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9783829602747

Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff
Author: Thomas Ruff
Publisher: Distributed Art Publishers (DAP)
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2003
Genre: Photography
ISBN:

"Thomas Ruff has created a substantial photographic oeuvre, in which he draws our attention to all fields of contemporary life: petit bourgeois homes ... modernist and current architectural arts; the ... faces of our fellow human beings ... outer space; studies of local neighborhoods by night; the news industry's non-stop invention of pictures [photographs from German-language newspapers reproduced and printed by Ruff with no words of explanation in order to find out what information was left when the picture was isolated from its function] ... our bodies; and modifications in perception through the pictorial explosion on the Internet"--Page 7.

Neo Rauch: PROPAGANDA

Neo Rauch: PROPAGANDA
Author:
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
Total Pages: 77
Release: 2019-09-03
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1644230119

One of the most influential figurative painters of his generation, Neo Rauch presents bold, new work in PROPAGANDA. Rauch is widely celebrated for his captivating compositions that bring together figurative painting and surrealism into an entirely new kind of visual encounter. They often hint at broader narratives and histories—seemingly reconnecting with artistic traditions of realism—but they remain dreamlike and impossible to reduce to a single story. Though his art is highly refined and executed with great technical skill, Rauch himself stresses the intuitive, deeply personal nature of how he works. As the artist notes, “My process is far less a reflection than it is drawing from the sediments of my past, which occurs in an almost trance-like state.” Eight large-scale canvases and seven smaller, more intimately scaled works continue the artist’s exploration of figuration and the ambiguous nature of meaning in visual art. In some of the larger works, the saturation of the canvas with characters, objects, and, forms, all rendered at different scales and in conflicting arrangements, creates a collage-like quality—a figurative scrapbook of Rauch’s personal iconography. The publication features a short story by acclaimed novelist and playwright Daniel Kehlmann, which was inspired by the paintings in this book. The fantastical text moves between present-day New York and an unknown time of enchanted forests, knights, and witches, exploring the many layers found in Rauch’s canvases. Published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at David Zwirner, Hong Kong in 2019, Neo Rauch: PROPAGANDA is available in both English-only and bilingual English/traditional Chinese editions.

Architectures of Herzog & de Meuron

Architectures of Herzog & de Meuron
Author: Thomas Ruff
Publisher: Peter Blum Edition
Total Pages: 35
Release: 1994
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780935875126

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Herzog & de Meuron held in summer, 1994 at Peter Blum and the Swiss Institute in New York.

Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff
Author: Thomas Ruff
Publisher: Kehrer Verlag
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Modernism (Art)
ISBN: 9783868282610

Ruff's exhibition catalogue Stellar Landscapes focuses specifically on four of his series: the stars series (1989-1992); zycles (2007); the cassini series (2008-2009); and his recent ma.r.s. series. Ruff uses scientific images as the source material for his photographs - many of them freely accessible from the internet. He retouches the images, giving them a new character whose abstract beauty serves as a surface for the imagination. Ruff's work poses questions about mass production of images and contemporary artistic licence.

Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff
Author: Régis Durand
Publisher: Centre National Photographie
Total Pages: 112
Release: 1997
Genre: Photography
ISBN:

Catalogue de l'exposition au Centre national de la photographie, Paris, 1997