New York: Thomas Ruff

The sheer enormity of the universe boggles the mind, instilling within us a sense of the sublime. In his immense photographs, Thomas Ruff blends the imaginary with hyper-reality, making the viewer feel small. For the series ma.r.s., Ruff took highly accurate images from NASA and applied his vision to unknown planets. 
Through a few grains of color, distortions and disproportions, the elements of the image are transformed into abstract compositions of an indeterminable texture. We cannot be sure if what we see is soft, brittle, large, deep, painted, sculpted, captured or remodeled. It is our own belief, irrational or not, that responds. This endows the series with a sense of play and mystery, supplemented by a few three-dimensional images. Navigating through these craters, the viewer is lured into their cavities, bringing back all the disturbing secrets of the galaxy. 
 Another variation of the photographic process, the series Photograms draws on experiments with light. The artist references Man Ray and his praise of feminine curves in a photograph that is sober, monochromatic and abstract, with two lines intertwined. Here, the process is not mechanical, but virtual. This allows the artist to introduce effects that disrupt the viewer used to this kind of imagery: relief and depth of field, multiple colors, which recall the paintings of another artist who experimented with photogram, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. We find the same research into color, space, light and transparency. Ruff’s anachronistic work offers a new approach to photography. Laurence Cornet Thomas Ruff : Photograms // ma.r.s. April 12th to June 15th, 2013 Galerie David Zwirner 525 & 533 West 19th Street
 New York, NY 10011 USA Tel. : +1 212 727 2070