Thomas Ruff: d.o.pe.

Printed onto industrial-style carpets, the works in this series feature fractal patterns that Ruff has generated with a new, specialized software program. These patterns, which can be both mathematically derived and naturally occurring, are infinitely repetitive and self-similar across different scales. Ruff initially wanted to incorporate fractals in his work around the time he began exploring the pixelation of digital images in the late 1990s, but lacked the sufficient technology. In 2008, he was able to create imagery that embodied mathematical concepts with his zycles series—works that are visualizations of mathematical calculations, but offer illusions of perspective. With d.o.pe, he continues to explore the possibilities of rendering “actual” worlds that are otherwise invisible to the human eye. Titled after Aldous Huxley’s autobiographical volume, The Doors of Perception (1954), which details the author’s hallucinogenic experiments with mind-altering drugs, Ruff’s series invites viewers to reflect on the boundaries between the fantastical and the everyday. By replacing the flatness of photographic paper with the relative thickness of carpets, the artist further emphasizes the idea of sensory perception, while at the same time evoking the endless “depth” of fractals. The use of carpets also recall the ancient tradition of tapestries, a medium which has often been used to create woven reproductions of paintings, and thus fulfill a mimetic dimension similar to photography.