Thomas Ruff - Contemporary Art Part II New York Friday, May 13, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Schöttler, Munich

  • Literature

    M. Winzen, Thomas Ruff: 1979 to the Present, Cologne 2001, pp. 231-233 (all illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    While experimenting with composite faces in 1992, Ruff came across the Minolta Montage Unit, a picture generating machine, used by the police in Germany in the 1970s to generate phantom pictures. Through a combination of mirrors, four portraits, fed into the machine, produce one composite picture. Thomas Ruff started out reconstructing faces but soon found it more interesting to construct artificial faces that do not, but could conceivably, exist in reality. He wanted to work with this kind of manipulation, which has been practiced throughout the history of photography, by means of techniques like double exposure, retouching, diverse darkroom procedures, and now digital processing. But he did not want to use any of these techniques. The picture was to be created in front of the camera and recorded in a single shot. Thomas therefore borrowed one of the Minolta Montage Units from the historical collection of police equipment in Berlin and combined two of his portraits into one new one. He then used the new picture generate by the machine for his silkscreen.

    (M. Winzen, Thomas Ruff: 1979 to the Present, Cologne 2001, p. 231)

385

25 Works from the Anderes Porträt Series

1994-1995
Silkscreen on paper.
Each 28 1/8 x 22 in. (71.4 x 55.9 cm.)
Each signed, dated "Thomas Ruff, 1994/95" and numbered of six on the reverse. Each work is from an edition of six plus two artist's proofs.

Estimate
$70,000 - 90,000 

Contemporary Art Part II

13 May 2011
New York