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T H O M A S R U F F
Fascinated by the extraordinary immediacy and delirious variety of images now available via the Internet, Thomas Ruff has, in his recent work, begun to appropriate and manipulate a range of downloaded images. These works constitute a veritable lexicon of contemporary times, including images of war, natural disasters, the World Trade Center attack, famous tourist sites, and reproductions of famous paintings. In jpeg bo02 , smoke plumes billow above marshlands in southern Iraq. This is a landscape marked and marred by oil production and rampant war. Close up, the work is an almost purely abstract system of squares and grids; only from a distance is the depicted scene visible. And while the scene itself may have been ominous and violent, the resulting landscape is dreamy and enticing. Instead of war, the picture suggests the more exalted visions of Romantic or Impressionist painting, as in the views of J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, and Caspar David Friedrich. In the midst of this reverie, however, Ruff abruptly reminds the viewer, as he always does, that a photograph is a highly artificial and constructed device filled with diverse and contradictory information.
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