Thomas Ruff
phg.11, 2013
Sagaponack
German artist Thomas Ruff was born in Zell am Hamersbach in 1958 and currently lives and works in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Ruff is a leading innovator in the generation of German artists from what is known as the Dusseldorf School that propelled photography into mainstream art. Open and explorative, he has pushed the limits of the medium, harnessing technologies both old and new—including night vision, hand-tinting, and stereoscopy—to reconceptualize architectural, astrological, pornographic, and portrait photography. In recent works, he has engaged the photogram, the camera-less technique advanced by Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy and others during the early twentieth century; and the visual properties of the photographic negative.
Works appear in
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin
Moderna Museet Stockholm
The Art Institute of Chicago
Dallas Museum of Art
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford
National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen
Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.