Thomas Ruff

Since the early 1980s Thomas Ruff has explored the photographic medium, the way it is used and the world of contemporary digital visual culture.

This volume contains and comments a seminal selection of 200 photographic works by this important german artist: including images of domestic interiors, portraits, houses and architecture, starry skies, nocturnal urban scenes and nudes, it focuses on the blurring of the distinction between photography and painting today and predominantly on ruff’s more abstract recent works, particularly his relationship with digital imagery and its production, which he began to investigate in the 1990s.

This book, realized on the occasion of a major retrospective that takes place at Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, features new essays by the curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, as well as by Daniel Birnbaum and Giorgio Verzotti.
the volume also includes a detailed chronology of the artist’s exhibitions, a bio-bibliographical appendix, a rich anthology including texts on the artist by Wim Beeren, Per Bj. Boym, Boris Von Brauchitsch, Ian Brunskill, Régis Durand, Marc Freidus, Reinhold Happel, Jacques Herzog, Julian Heynen, Michel Houellebecq, Jörg Johnen, Eva Karcher, Valeria Liebermann, Annelie Pohlen, David Rimanelli, Michael Stoeber, and Matthias Winzen, as well as conversations and interviews by Daniel Birnbaum, Max Dax, Stephan Dillemuth, Isabelle Graw and Friederike Wappler.