Chromogenic print
34 x 41 cm [13.4 x 16.1 inches]
Edition of 50 (unframed)
This edition comes unframed, however Thomas Ruff has designed a bespoke frame, made by Frame London, for this work. Please specify when you order if you are interested in framing.
About the work
To accompany his Whitechapel Gallery exhibition Thomas Ruff: Photographs 1979 - 2017, the artist has created a new limited edition print in an edition of 50.
Thomas Ruff who began his career with the series Interieurs (Interiors) in 1979 returns to this theme with a new body of work, entitled m.n.o.p, shown for the first time at the Whitechapel Gallery. Ruff’s edition for the Whitechapel Gallery is a work from this series.
m.n.o.p is composed of a set of original black and white photographs purchased by Ruff at auctions in Paris and Berlin. These installation shots were drawn from the inaugural display of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (the forerunner to New York’s Guggenheim Museum) in 1939. An unusual environment, The Museum of Non-Objective Painting was decorated with pleated grey velour on the walls and thick carpet, in a former automobile showroom.
Ruff has digitalised and added colour overlays to the images, selecting features of the interior, such as such as carpets, curtains and partition walls. Ruff adopts an intuitive process, where personal taste, memory and imagination interweave, to impose this palette (mainly pastel hues of pistachio, maroon and violet). Accentuating often decorative details, the colour combinations and saturation are reminiscent of the 1950’s, or the hand-tinting process that dominated photography at the turn of the 19th century. In sharp contrast the paintings depicted remain untouched with the result that each becomes both historic document and abstract composition.
About the artist
Fascinated by the various possibilities of photography, Thomas Ruff has employed analogue, dark-room techniques alongside computer-generated and digital images, photographs from scientific archives, and those appropriated from the Internet and print publishing in his oeuvre. With a focus on process and aesthetics, Ruff has approached topics including political propaganda, portraiture and the military application of, and manipulation of, photographic technologies, always with a questioning of the veracity of the image.
Selected Exhibitions
Thomas Ruff (b. 1958, Zell am Harmersbach, West Germany) lives and works in Düsseldorf. Ruff's work has been the subject of major solo exhibitions internationally. His work is held in museum collections worldwide, including The Art Institute of Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, Austria; Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent.
Whitechapel Gallery editions are generously donated by the artists. All proceeds from the sale of these works directly support our exhibition and education programmes. As is traditional in editions publishing, prices will rise as an edition starts to sell out.
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Works can be purchased with Own Art, allowing you to spread the cost of your purchase over 10 months, completely interest free.
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