Press Release

David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of work by the German artist Thomas Ruff (b. 1958), which will be on view across two floors of its space in London and will mark the artist’s first solo show in the city since his critically acclaimed presentations at Whitechapel Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery in 2017, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2018, where he was commissioned to create a series to inaugurate its Photography Centre. The ground floor will feature two recent series—expériences lumineuses (begun 2024), on view for the first time in this presentation, and untitled# (begun 2022)—that together represent a departure in Ruff’s ongoing investigation of photographic abstraction. For both bodies of work, instead of using found or digitally rendered images or generating them with a computer program, Ruff takes the photographs himself in a darkroom he constructed to create the resulting compositions, returning to a mode of production that defined his early career.

The first floor of the gallery will be dedicated to a survey of works from key series chosen by the artist, including Porträts (Portraits, 1981–1991/1998–2001), Substrat (Substratum, 2001–),jpegs (2004–), cassini(2008–2011), Fotogramme (Photograms, 2012–), flower.s (2018–), and d.o.pe. (2022–). Spanning forty years, this selection illustrates Ruff’s experimental approach to the medium, the breadth of his visual strategies, and his in-depth examination of photographic genres through processes both analogue and digital, which produce a range of abstract and figurative imagery. This will be the artist’s thirteenth exhibition with David Zwirner.

Read More

Installation Views

About the Artist

In his considered approach to the means and possibilities of photography, Thomas Ruff explores a breadth of themes that is reflected in the range of techniques he employs: analogue and digital exposures taken by the artist exist in his practice alongside computer generated imagery, photographs from scientific archives, and pictures culled and manipulated from newspapers, magazines, and the Internet.

View Artist Profile

Also Exhibiting at David Zwirner

About the Gallery
Since opening its doors in 1993, David Zwirner has been home to innovative, singular, and pioneering exhibitions across a variety of media and genres. The gallery has helped foster the careers of some of the most influential artists working today, and has maintained long-term representation of a wide-ranging, international group of artists and estates. Based in New York with spaces in Chelsea and the Upper East Side, David Zwirner expanded to Europe in 2012 with a gallery in an eighteenth-century Georgian townhouse in London’s Mayfair district, and opened its first gallery in Asia in January 2018 in Central Hong Kong.
View Gallery Profile
Address
24 Grafton Street
London
United Kingdom
Opening Hours
Tuesday – Thursday
10am – 6pm
(1)
London 24 Grafton Street
David Zwirner
24 Grafton Street, London, United Kingdom
+44 203 538 3165
http://www.davidzwirner.com

Opening hours
Tuesday – Thursday
10am – 6pm
The art world in focus