Thomas Ruff: "Nudes"

T.R. site

Tate:
Ruff’s more recent work, created entirely through digital means. In the Nudes, Ruff’s manipulation of the image impedes our visual access to the depicted scenes, and tones down their aggressive sexual nature. The abstract colour surfaces of the Substratum photographs, composed out of the vast visual culture of the internet, go so far as to liberate photographic representation from its dependence on the real. At the same time, no matter how much one might want to see painting or digital virtuosity here, there seems to be no getting around the matter of the photograph. After all, a substratum is what facilitates the adhesion of the light-sensitive emulsion in the making of one. It is, in a sense, the very foundation of the photographic image.