Thomas Ruff: Nudes

Zwirner & Wirth and David Zwirner Gallery are pleased to present a two-part exhibition of the work of German photographer Thomas Ruff, an occasion inaugurating the representation of this artist by Zwirner and Wirth. On view uptown at Zwirner & Wirth will be a collection of Ruff's earlier work from the 1980s and 1990s, including selections from his Stars, Portraits, Houses, Newspapers, and Night series. Downtown, David Zwirner Gallery will present Ruff's new series of photographs entitled Nudes.

Best known for his oversized, dead-pan portraits, his unmediated shots of commonplace interiors, and his seemingly straightforward photographs of architecture, Ruff has quietly approached many familiar genres, and proceeded to discreetly reinvent them. Ruff has an uncanny feel for the look of the ordinary–in people, places, and objects. However, his brand of photographic objectivity is not that purportedly practiced by photojournalists. Rather, it is elicited by scanning the mundane for the telling particulars of aggregated detail, and by a reserved and skeptical curiosity towards photography's ultimate truthfulness.

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