Thomas Ruff in Auckland

Thomas Ruff: Photographs
Gow Langsford
26 March – 24 April 2010

Internationally acclaimed German photographer Thomas Ruff rarely has his work exhibited in New Zealand though he gets a lot of coverage in the international art press, and so most art lovers here know of him. This Gow Langsford exhibition brings eight examples from his back and more recent catalogue. They demonstrate in a limited way (because you don’t see each series for background context) not only his interest in strict procedural method, but also for the viewer, the value of direct experience in a gallery. What the works have to offer because of their scale and (in some cases) acuity simply doesn’t transmit to reproductions in magazines or online.

Despite the inclusion of three recently treated images of partially clad women that Ruff has taken from porn sites and digitally treated to become blurred as if the camera has been furiously shaken, it is the 1997 portraits that are pornographic, not the nudes.

What am I getting at here? Well, because of their size (2010 x 1650 mm), you are free to really look at these faces. You can linger and dwell on their detail in a way that you never could with a living human being standing in front of you – unless you don’t care about being rude. Here your voyeuristic intrusion is welcomed, with the end result that you can’t help but notice that these people up close and enlarged are not pretty.

You can see inflamed red patches of skin, mottled blemishes, epidermal bristles, infected striations and tiny pustules. It is like reading Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver describing the bodies of the giant people of Brobdingnag, or in turn, the Lilliputians’ previous description of him. The human physiognomy magnified becomes repulsive. There seems to be a malicious glee behind Ruff’s ‘objective’ honesty and the fact you will keep coming back to zero in for another look.

In terms of impact and sheer ocular escapism however, it is Ruff’s very large (2600 x 1880 mm) picture of a night sky, borrowed from an observatory archive, that is the star (so to speak) of this exhibition. It is mesmerising in its evocation of the infinite, even with a few fake stars the artist has mischievously added. You can really immerse yourself in its ambiguous tunnelling space of thousands of glowing pin points.

The appropriated images from erotic web sites amuse because of their vibrating edges – from a deliberately placed tremulous arousal on the part of the artist; a digitally induced fibrillation within the mechanism of the camera. Ruff’s ‘nudes’ look like overlapping double exposures where the smudged movement is that of the shaking photographer more that that of the cavorting models.

His initially crisp found images now go beyond blurring. It is not just a matter of vague, soft edges, as if vaseline has been smeared on the lenses; the quiver is horizontal, a slight shadowy aura – a calculated overreaction where Ruff seems to be laughing at the fickle vagaries of desire, and his attempts to capture it. With digital technology altering the acuity he sends up priapic-lensed photographers like say, Thomas, the leading David Hemmings character in Antonioni’s ‘Blow Up.'

Oddly the most interesting works in the show are small, some blurry 1994 portraits that are halfway between the above two extremes. They were created using a pre-computer Minolta montaging technology where hybrid ‘identikits’ were developed by the German police so that ethereally blurry portraits of new identities were constructed out of old ones (a ‘magic mirrors’ system of blending) with strange ghostly auras - like genealogies with children replicating the individual features of their same-gender parents. There is an appealing mix of antiquated (Flash Gordonish) sci-fi in this primitive portrait cloning.

This show is a good introduction to Ruff’s practice but it really barely scratches the surface. There is one photograph of a building included I haven’t discussed, while not shown are themes such as his schematic abstract ‘drawings’ of mathematical parabolas, profiles of the rings of Saturn, and swirling images of intensely saturated coloured light on what seems to be the surface of rippling water. Ruff’s curiosity in unexpected subjects is part of his appeal, but even a genre as traditional as the portrait he has succeeded in transforming.

Inside this world: the limits of faith

Out of this world
Curated by Leonard Emmerling and Stephen Bambury
St. Paul St Gallery
17 September – 16 October 2009


The title of this international exhibition Out of this world refers to the well known, 1888 anonymous line engraving (made from a wood block) of a pilgrim poking his head through the bubblelike membrane that encloses the natural world , the enclosing sphere made of scientific explanation, in order to see the divine and inexplicable forces in action beyond. The experience of encountering the incomprehensible, a magnitude so vast we cannot grasp it, what we also call ‘the Sublime’, is the theme here.

The show examines artists’ attempts to capture this – some sincere, others humorous – and whether it can be upheld as proof of a Supreme Being. It also introduces unjustified belief, the notion of ‘leaps of faith’, dividing the artists into two camps: believers and sceptics.

Actually McCahon is the only ‘believer’ here, apart from the anonymous wood engraver, and the only New Zealander. What that suggests I’m not sure. Certainly that such mystics are outnumbered, particularly in today's art world - judging by this exhibition. However it is a great McCahon work, with impeccably handled dry paint on jute, showing the comet Kohoutek streaking across the sky in three separate, butted together, charcoal coloured hangings. The word ‘Jump’ on the far left declares McCahon's risky faith. It seems to mean let your imagination leap across the void of common sense to grasp the significance of this wondrous event. Like the kneeling man in the wood engraving, ignore the world of logic.

The prints by Vija Celmins of night skies or expanses of ocean come closest to McCahon in terms of an intimate sized work that confronts the viewer with enormity. These small works draw you in close but they could be pro-Mystic or pro-Science. The two viewpoints are not necessarily in opposition.

One artwork that implies that it is the viewer alone who is generating any mystical being ‘out there’ is the hologram by James Turrell. It alters its soft, vivid green, rectangular shape as you approach or move around it, depending on your bodily relationship to its glass slab and the illuminating spotlight.

Another particularly gorgeous work connected to the body is a deep velvety black, horizontal rectangle by Peter Rösel. He has lightly flicked specks of white toothpaste over it from a toothbrush. In this way the painting becomes an open mouth, implying God has an oral orifice and is a human creation that mimics ourselves.

Thomas Ruff plays a similar sort of game with his enormous glossy photograph of a night sky, where he states he is prone to adding one extra hand-painted star. Unlike Rösel where God imitates people, Ruff imitates God, yet giving him the human attribute of mischievousness.

Ben Rivers has a grainy five minute film of snippets made with a hand-held camera showing lines of pilgrims apparently ascending the Irish volcanic hill of Station Island on Lough Derg where St. Patrick lived. The added soundtrack plays the noise of incessantly trampled scoria, yet Catholic pilgrims are meant to go barefooted around certain shrines on the way. This hints that perhaps that the film is faked. The Purgatory pilgrims in this film keep their boots securely fastened.

Such fakery is further explored in Linda Quinlan’s two channel film of her version of McNaught's comet seen two years ago over Tasmania. Her film is a double exposure that seems to include a Milky Way of oil droplets floating on water. The main image is based on a lamp placed in a forest with a cloth thrown over it that has a circular hole cut in. This creates a diagonal beam of light amenable to being crossed by dust clouds. In the background stars are formed from the surrounding, reflecting, glossy leaves.

Modernist art history and the so-called Death of Painting is laughed at by Jorge Molder through his film of what seems to be Malevich’s famous 1913 Suprematist work, Black Square. This ‘full void’ that established a ‘supremacy of pure feeling’ representing God (‘I search for God. I search within myself for myself’) is lampooned when it becomes a trapdoor in a ceiling that opens so that a besuited gentleman can then escape.

The fleeing gent could be a Suprematist painter or he could be God. He could be a modern version of the observer poking his head through the firmament, reversing, pulling his head back out and coming down to earth. This is a wonderful, exceptionally cohesive, exhibition that is witty and light, yet absorbing in the way it counters the position of say, Natasha Conland’s Mystic Truths of two years ago, in relation to ‘outer-worldly’ states of mind. An important show to see.

Images from top to bottom: anonymous, Colin McCahon, Vija Celmins, James Turrell, Ben Rivers, and Linda Quinlan.