Viewing Thomas Ruff: expériences lumineuses at David Zwirner

In his astonishing career – spanning from the 1970s to today – the German photographer Thomas Ruff has covered many of art’s major genres, from the nude to landscape to architectural photography, working in series, attempts to understand and unravel the ‘grammar of photography’. Photography, in essence, is Ruff’s subject and muse.

At this new exhibition – Ruff’s first London solo since his 2017 Whitechapel Gallery exhibition – Ruff unveils two recent series for the first time, explorations into photographic abstraction. At first, they look like charcoal drawings – as Susanna Brown, curator, points out. A staggering two metres tall, they reveal themselves as smoky, hazy photographs only on closer inspection.

Ruff employed an experimental process to produce these giant photographic abstractions, in a purpose-built studio. He arranged compositions of glass objects, such as mirrors and lesnes, on a whiteboard before exposing them to multiple beams of light. Working more like a scientist than an artist, Ruff explains ““There’s not one way of making photographs. There are thousands of possibilities you can choose from…. I am just interested in the result and if the result is worth discussing.”