Thomas Ruff
dal 23/9/2011 al 7/1/2012
Segnalato da
23/9/2011
Thomas Ruff
LWL-Landesmuseum fur Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Munster
Stellar Landscapes. The exhibition focuses specifically on four of Ruff's series: the stars series, produced between 1989 and 1992, zycles from 2007, the cassini series from 2008/2009, and recent work from the ma.r.s. series, shown now for the first time in an institutional context. Individual works from other series that explore a similar theme are also shown.
Thomas Ruff is one of the most internationally well-known contemporary
German photographers. Over the course of two-dozen photography series,
he has explored and defined the medium's limits like no other
contemporary artist. The exhibition in the LWL-Landesmuseum für Kunst
und Kulturgeschichte focuses specifically on four of Thomas Ruff's
series: the stars series, produced between 1989 and 1992, zycles from
2007, the cassini series from 2008/2009, and recent work from the
ma.r.s. series, shown now for the first time in an institutional
context. Individual works from other series that explore a similar
theme are also shown.
Since 1989, Thomas Ruff stopped taking and printing his own
photographs in order to work with existing materials. His work is
primarily concerned with questions that investigate the structure and
content of the medium. Scientific images are the source material for
all the photographs shown, and many of them were freely accessible via
the internet. While Thomas Ruff's work for the stars series was
limited to selecting details from photographs, he took a heavier hand
in processing the source material in his new series: for the cassini
and ma.r.s. series, Thomas Ruff utilised pictures from various NASA
missions. He digitally retouched them, altered the colours,
manipulated contrast and cropping. Ruff's colouration of the original
realistic, black and white pictures gives them a new character: they
become painterly, aesthetic pictures whose abstract beauty serves as a
surface for our imaginations.
More than any other contemporary artist, Thomas Ruff's work poses
questions about the mass production of images. What can an image
actually say today and in what ways do we read it? The purpose of
image archives and the internet are also central themes of his work,
as well as questions pertaining to contemporary artistic license.
The exhibition is supported by the Kunststiftung NRW and the
Kulturstiftung der Sparkasse
Münster.
Press contact:
Frank Tafertshofer, Telefon: 0251 591-235, presse@lwl.org
Image: Thomas Ruff, ma.r.s. 10, 2010, (c) VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2011
Opening: 24 September 2011, 7 pm.
LWL-Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte
Domplatz 10 - 48143 Münster
Opening times:
Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am–6 pm, Thursday until 9 pm
Closed Mondays