PHOTO:Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff has been a leading figure in contemporary photography since the ‘90s when he emerged as part of the Becher School. Along with Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth, Ruff studied photography with Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. He has fundamentally changed our relationship to the photographic image, moving it beyond reactionary ideas of documentation and supposed “truth”.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo

The exhibition at The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo introduces a wide range of works by Thomas Ruff, stretching from his earliest efforts to his most recent and four new works, never shown before. Ruff was first acclaimed for a series of huge portraits. Since then, he has explored a variety of themes, including architecture, urban landscapes, nudes, and celestial bodies. Through these subjects, he has developed a unique vision of the world we live in. The medium of photography, closely entwined with our vision and perception, is another important theme in Ruff’s work. He searches for new possibilities in photographic expression using a multitude of images as his materials. These not only include Ruff’s own pictures but everything from digital images from the Internet to old photographs he has collected. The exhibition presents 125 works, drawn from a total of 18 series, including Ruff’s first effort “Interieurs”, “Porträts”, which earned him widespread acclaim, “Cassini” and “ma.r.s.”, inspired by his boyhood interest in outer space, also from the series “Nudes” and “jpeg”, which examine visual and information spaces in the age of the Internet. Ruff’s latest series, “press++”, was inspired by the artist’s acquisition of an archive of press photographs from a newspaper company. In this latest work, the artist made use of photographic prints from an erstwhile media space and related textual data as his materials. In the exhibition, four new works, based on press photographs provided by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper company, make their world premiere in Japan. Ruff’s latest series, “press++”, was inspired by the artist’s acquisition of an archive of press photographs from a newspaper company. In this latest work, the artist made use of photographic prints from an erstwhile media space and related textual data as his materials. In this exhibition, four new works, based on press photographs provided by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper company, make their premiere in Japan.

Info: The National Museum of Modern Art, 3-1 Kitanomaru-koen, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Duration: 30/8-13/11/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:00-17:00, Fri 10:00-20:00, www.momat.go.jp