ART CITIES: N.York-Thomas Ruff

Already as a student in the class of the photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art in the early 1980s, Thomas Ruff chose a conceptual approach to photography, which continues to determine his handling of the most diverse pictorial genres and historical possibilities of photography to this day.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: David Zwirner Gallery Archive

Thomas Ruff became known for their experimental approach to the medium and its evolving technological capabilities. Working in discrete series, Ruff has since conducted an in-depth examination of various photographic genres, including portraiture, the nude, landscape, and architectural photography. The artist’s overarching inquiry into the “grammar of photography” accounts not only for his heterogeneous subject matter but also for the extreme variation of technical means used to produce his series, ranging from anachronistic devices to the most advanced computer simulators and covering nearly all ground in between. Thomas Ruff’ presents for the first time, “d.o.pe.” (2022- ), his new series of works  titled “d.o.pe.” which features fractal patterns the artist creates with a specialized software program and printed with colaris* on velour carpet. The title of the series references Aldous Huxley’s autobiographical volume “The Doors of Perception” published in 1954, Huxley drew his title from a line in William Blake’s poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern”. In this text, Huxley elaborates on his psychedelic experience under the influence of mescaline in May 1953. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, ranging from the “purely aesthetic” to “sacramental vision” and reflects on their philosophical and psychological implications. This new body of work extends Ruff’s ongoing exploration of human perception and his interest in creating digital imagery that, while artificially constructed, appears naturally derived. Featuring fractal patterns that Thomas Ruff generates with a specialized software program and prints onto industrial carpets, these works foreground Ruff’s ongoing pursuit of the visual expression of the beauty of mathematics. Ruff first became aware of fractals, a term introduced by French mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975, early in his career in relation to his longstanding interest in the visualization of mathematical phenomena. In fractal patterns, which can be both mathematically derived and naturally occurring, an abstract motif is infinitely repeated such that it is self-similar across many different scales. Formally, these motifs recall the psychedelic art and imagery prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s, which Ruff encountered in his adolescence through album covers and other formative experiences as a teenager in the Black Forest—an apt connection for the artist as this kind of imagery also focused on an expanded notion of perception. Ruff initially wanted to incorporate fractals in his work around the time he began exploring the pixelation of digital images in series such as “nudes” (begun in 1999) and “substrat” (begun in 2001), but the technology that would allow him to do so did not exist yet. In 2008 he was able to create imagery that embodied mathematical concepts when he began working on “zycles” a group of images that were made without the use of a camera and featured curves visualizing complex formulas from the field of linear algebra. Years later, he returned to the idea of fractals after learning of a professional software that allows for the generation and manipulation of such imagery. Foregrounding the pure pleasures of visuality and looking, the works in “d.o.pe.” manifest the type of patterns that Ruff imagines he would have liked to see during his teenage experimentations with such endlessly repeating structures that offer a sensorial environment in which the mind can wander. This is reinforced by the artist’s use of velour carpets as a support. Originally printing the images on photographic paper, Ruff was dissatisfied with the resulting slick, flat surfaces and instead turned to a newly available, innovative technology that allowed him to print these highly detailed images onto the textured surface of the carpets. Hung directly on the wall, they imbue the imagery with a physical presence and tactile quality. A further point of reference for the artist is the Greek goddess Demeter, known for her influence over everything that blooms. With their lush textures, radiant colors, and endlessly multiplying quality, the works in “d.o.pe.” almost evoke fecund landscapes, between a trip and a dive into the deep recesses of an aquatic underworld. Ruff’s images additionally recall the highly detailed and exuberant Northern Renaissance style of artists such as Hieronymus Bosch and Matthias Grünewald, particularly Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” (1490–1500), a painting that has long fascinated the artist for its ability to merge the real and the imagined, creating a microcosm unto itself.

* Colaris is a family of high-performance, high-quality printing machines for all kinds of textile and carpet materials. Ranging from 2,200 mm up to 5,200 mm printing width, it covers most of the textile applications. Well-tested inks with high fastness levels are used: Acid inks for polyamide (nylon) and silk.

Photo: Thomas Ruff, d.o.pe.01 (detail), 2022, Colaris on velour carpet, edition 2/4 + AP, 266.7 x 199.4 cm, 105 x 78 1/2 inches, Signed, dated, numbered, and inscribed verso, © Thomas Ruff, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner Gallery

Info: David Zwirner Gallery, 533 West 19th Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 15/9-22/10/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.davidzwirner.com/