Thomas Ruff, Object Relations, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. April 28 to July 31, 2016 Jill Glessing
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Document generated on 10/01/2021 9:11 p.m. Ciel variable art, photo, médias, culture Thomas Ruff, Object Relations, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. April 28 to July 31, 2016 Jill Glessing D’un angle décalé From Another Angle Number 104, Fall 2016 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/83702ac See table of contents Publisher(s) Les Productions Ciel variable ISSN 1711-7682 (print) 1923-8932 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this review Glessing, J. (2016). Review of [Thomas Ruff, Object Relations, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. April 28 to July 31, 2016]. Ciel variable, (104), 88–89. Tous droits réservés © Les Productions Ciel variable, 2016 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ But beneath the portraits’ realism lies for contemporary photographic art, the perverse tendency of resistance a phenomenon that Ruff himself helped to authority: the evenly lit faces offer establish – and their blue tones that up every surface detail, yet their blank suggest the historical cyanotype process. expressions bar any deeper access. Inspiring these works, Ruff explained The series was made in the wake of during an exhibition tour, was his daugh- the “German Autumn,” when officials, ter’s unfamiliarity with what had been roused by the Baader-Meinhof Group, the master of almost all photographs were slipping toward a surveillance since 1835 – the negative. Ruff asks us state and demanding photo ID at every to reconsider this primal technology, turn. Beneath what might seem to be either in nostalgic tribute or, for the a student’s adoption of his professors’ first time, as a unique aesthetic object straight style were critiques of both in its own right. the aesthetic convention of realist In addition to antiquated image transparency and, in showing all but technologies, Maschinen (2003) explores telling nothing, the state panopticon. outmoded industrial processes. Ruff’s These contradictory currents persist collection of historical glass-plate nega- through Ruff’s oeuvre: his documentary tives of factory equipment had been images line up behind the German Neue made for reproduction in advertising Sachlichkeit tradition, but his polymor- catalogues. The machines, too large phous play promiscuously challenges to move to studios to be photographed, hierarchies of genre, media, and histor- were instead isolated from their factory ical process and undermines the possi- environments by sheets of white fabric bility of photographic “truth.” that was then airbrushed to a gauzy, Anchoring the centrality of archival ghostly haze. Further delineated by materials for Ruff are pieces from his Ruff with colour, the lowly behemoths collection, including Étienne Léopold – appearing as strange beasts from Trouvelot’s 1885 albumen print of an earlier time or alien monsters – are an electrical charge and two stunning here made grand through their large- photograms made by Arthur Siegel in format presentation. Clearly resonant the 1940s. Examples of Ruff’s own 3-D with the Bechers’ typologies of obsolete digital photograms, inspired by Siegel’s, industrial infrastructure, their influence would have lent illustrative symmetry, is undercut by Ruff’s playful obstruction but were surprisingly absent. of authenticity. Most conceptually intriguing were The four images from Ruff’s latest digitally produced negatives based on series, Press++ (2015), based on archival historical photographs from Ruff’s series press images made originally for news negative (2014–16): one group based media, entered the artist’s collection Maschinen 1027, 2003, chromogenic print with Diasec, 145 × 113 cm, courtesy David Zwirner, on Étienne-Jules Marey’s chronopho- via eBay. Once published on disposable New York/London, © Thomas Ruff/SODRAC (2016) tographs, from the AGO vaults, and newsprint, they are here transformed another on late-nineteenth-century into monumental displays, both by their prints of artists in their studios, from massive enlargement and by the choice Ruff’s collection. Accentuating Ruff’s of subject – masculine conquests, both Thomas Ruff wanton disregard for purity of process military and astronomical, showing Object Relations and genre (by intertwining science, soldiers in battle, astronauts landing, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto photography, and art) are their smaller and the equipment they play with. The April 28 to July 31, 2016 size – diverging from large-format once-discrete fronts and backs of the presentation, almost standard now photographs are conjoined, making a A desire to produce and circulate images make hard political critiques. Others, drove the invention of photography. less polemically, used it self-reflexively Almost two centuries later, the dream to explore the nature and history of the verges on nightmare as archivists and photographic medium. Ruff is among image theorists scramble to find space these. An eclectic mix of archival and and meaning for all the photographs reworked images – none originating in that have been produced. It’s a good time his own camera – engage with diverse for collectors. One of them – German media and genres across photographic artist Thomas Ruff – has, for nearly history: science, photojournalism, three decades now, been exploring the industrial photography, and art – all properties and potential of images made now processed into “art.” Drawn from by others. The Art Gallery of Ontario a much larger oeuvre that also explores exhibition Object Relations1 emphasizes pornography, landscape, architectural Ruff’s role as artist-collector-curator. works, and portraits, the selection in Ruff’s appropriation and repurposing this show exhibits the artist’s breadth of photographs joins a tradition that and openness to diverse inspirations. developed alongside new technologies Ruff gained art-world recognition that facilitated the proliferation of in 1986 for his large-scale, museum- mass-media images. Many engaging in friendly colour portraits of his Düsseldorf the form – John Heartfield in the 1930s, peers (Porträts). The work’s straight, the Situationists in the 1960s, and typological approach makes clear that Barbara Kruger in the 1980s – sucked Ruff took the instruction of his teachers, neg_artist_01, 2014, chromogenic print with Diasec, 71 × 81 cm, courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London, the potency out of found imagery to Bernd and Hilla Becher, deeply to heart. © Thomas Ruff/SODRAC (2016) 88 CIEL VARIABLE N ° 104 dense image-text palimpsest of signs: The exhibition is beautifully installed series – for example, Nudes (2012) and — — 1 The exhibition was curated by Sophie Hackett, the original photograph, the coloured overall, but the final room slips into the jpegs (2004–07), which were obviously the AGO’s associate curator of photography, lines marking out the edited version, realm of stunning. It is, no doubt, the distorted through pixilation or softening and was part of the 2016 Scotiabank CONTACT and a nest of textual information – four elegant, vertical frames holding – the manipulation here is imperceptible, Photography Festival. labels, catalogue numbers, and deep black skies sparkling with celestial thereby advancing his work deeper into — — directions for use. bodies that brings it there. Sterne (1989) the slippery terrain of appropriation. Jill Glessing teaches at Ryerson University A more diminutive collection of was the work that first led Ruff into Ruff’s Object Relations offers an intri- and writes on visual arts and culture. rephotographed newspaper images territories of appropriation. cate and beautiful foray through the — — is encased in a long vitrine in the centre With a keen interest in astronomy, history of photographic image making, of a third gallery (Zeitungsfotos, 1991). but acknowledging his inability to asking us to consider existential ques- Ruff had clipped the originals from pho tograph it properly, Ruff purchased tions about the presentation, mobility, newspapers earlier; revisiting them telescopic negatives from the European and meaning of this frighteningly years later, he found that, bereft of their Southern Observatory in Chile, which omnipresent medium. contexts, they were incomprehensible. he digitally edited. Unlike Ruff’s other Marie-Claire Blais et Pascal Grandmaison La vie abstraite (volets 1 et 2) Galerie René Blouin, Montréal Du 5 mars au 23 avril 2016 cette pièce est inspirée d’un écrit du peintre abstrait, Réalité naturelle et réalité abstraite. L’eau et le feu dominent dans ces séquences en quatre images. La toile est en effet brûlée, et la surface de l’écran semble souvent être crevée par un incendie ouvrant la toile, ici réduite à un voile noir. Comme Pascal Grandmaison l’a déjà fait dans d’autres œuvres, la progression destructrice du feu se trouve parfois inversée, recompo- sant la toile depuis les cendres. Le feu détruit et reconstruit à la fois la grille, et l’eau se propage en rides et ondes dont on ne sait d’où elles proviennent ni où elles vont. Pourrait-on en conclure que le duo Blais/Grandmaison choisit d’illustrer La première collaboration entre Marie- par un manipulateur invisible ; elle gon- Claire Blais et Pascal Grandmaison a dole, se plie, se tasse même. Elle danse donné lieu à la création de deux instal- entre les herbes et crépite sous l’action lations vidéographiques assez monu- de la pluie. Ainsi suivie par la caméra, mentales. La première, intitulée Le elle se présente comme une matière temps transformé, est d’une durée de totale, entière, d’intérêt certes, saisie 40 minutes et se présente sous la forme dans sa réalité matérielle, montrant d’une double projection aux images ses effets multiples, dans ses couleurs synchronisées reprenant la figure du comme dans ses formes. carré noir du peintre Kazimir Malevitch, Ce n’est pas la première fois que la fondateur du mouvement suprématiste.