10 х 13 in. cm.
Image size: 10 x 13 inches (25.4 x 33 cm)
Paper size: 23.5 x 29.5 inches (59.7 x 74.9 cm)
Thomas Ruff's 'Nudes' perfectly exemplifies the artist's approach to appropriating images from the internet or magazines and manipulating them by blowing them up to create pixilated renditions of the original.
Thomas Ruff (b. 1958, Zell am Harmersbach, Germany) is an internationally renowned photographer who lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. Ruff studied photography from 1977 to 1985 with Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. During his studies in Düsseldorf, Ruff developed his method of conceptual serial photography. In the last decade, Ruff has begun to appropriate and manipulate a range of downloaded images via the internet. As he is fascinated with the near-maniacal number of immediate images available to him, Ruff uses these to create a veritable lexicon of contemporary subjects, including images of war, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, reproductions of famous paintings, and tourist sites. These series illustrate the artist’s insistence that photographs capture merely “the surface of things.” World renowned, Ruff has been featured in numerous exhibitions and has recently held solo shows at Gagosian Gallery, London, England (2012); Haus der Kunst München, Munich, Germany (2012); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Málaga, Málaga, Spain (2011); Goethe-Institut Moskau, Moscow, Russia (2011); Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland (2011); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL (2011); Galerist Istanbul, Istanbul, Turkey (2010); and David Zwirner, New York, NY (2010).
Selected Public Collections:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Tate Modern, London, England
Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey
Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Tochigi, Japan