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THOMAS RUFF (b. 1958) NUDES (ER 10) signed, numbered of five and dated "Thomas Ruff 2000" on the ...

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THOMAS RUFF (b. 1958) NUDES (ER 10) signed, numbered of five and dated  Thomas Ruff 2000  on the ...
THOMAS RUFF
(b. 1958)
NUDES (ER 10)
signed, numbered of five and dated "Thomas Ruff 2000" on the reverse
c-print mounted with Diasec
in artist's wooden frame
57 x 431/2 in. (144.8 x 110.5 cm)
executed in 2000
this work is from an edition of five plus two artist's proofs and of the series NUDES
ESTIMATE: $40,000-60,000

PROVENANCE
Stellan Holm Gallery, NEW YORK

LITERATURE
M. Winzen, ed., THOMAS RUFF: 1979 TO THE PRESENT, COLOGNE,
2001, p. 238, No. NUD 046 (illustrated)
M. Houellebecq, THOMAS RUFF: NUDES, NEW YORK, 2003,
p. 93 (illustrated)
I've been interested in the genre of nude photography for a long time. What I find altogether boring is contemporary nude photography of the kind currently carried on by fashion photographers, who take supposedly interesting photographs of pretty models in some pleasant ambiance. That's something for adolescent 13-year-old Max readers. I'm 41, and when I'm naked I'm either lying in the bathtub or in bed with my girlfriend. My nude photographs are intended to be somewhat "more adult." In order to see what this other kind of nude photography might look like, I started doing some research on the internet - the marketplace for goods and information. And I found some strange things there.
Thomas Ruff quoted in S. Leeb, "Suchmaschinen. Interview with Thomas Ruff," TEXTE ZUR KUNST, COLOGNE, issue 36, vol. 9,
December 1999, p. 75
Around 1998 Thomas Ruff began to work on nude photography and also began experimenting with computer-generated, abstract pictures made of pixels. Through his Internet research into the genre of nude photography, he came across the field of pornography. Due to the poor resolution of these pictures on the World Wide Web, their pixel structure resembled the one he had been experimenting with. He decided to apply the same technique to the Internet pictures, processing them so that the pixel structure was only just barely visible. He used fuzziness and other blurring techniques, occasionally modifying the coloring and removing intrusive details. The selection of source pictures was based on such considerations as composition, lighting, coloring, or presentation. In the nudes Thomas Ruff wanted to cover the wide range of sexual fantasies and practices currently on offer on the Internet by professionals and amateurs...
M. Winzen, ed., THOMAS RUFF: 1979 TO THE PRESENT,
COLOGNE, 2001, p. 236