MCA DNA: Thomas Ruff June 9, 2011

The Museum of Contemporary Art launches MCA DNA, a new exhibition series that features iconic works that constitute the building blocks of the MCA Collection. The first focus of the MCA DNA series is the work of Thomas Ruff -- that includes his early large-scale portraits, his studies of modernist architecture, and his more recent exploration of digital media and photographic abstraction. Thomas Ruff belongs to a generation of German photographers - along with Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and Candida Hofer -- who studied at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf in the 1980s under the influential conceptual photographer Bernd Becher. The MCA Collection has a wide range of Ruff's work including large-scale portraits of German citizens, such as Portrait (Carolin Kewer) and Portrait (Heinz Haussman), along with images of architectural buildings by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and photographs of domestic interiors. In recent years, Ruff has continued to explore the creative potential of digital media, producing pure photographic abstractions by manipulating found digital images or creating intricate compositions through the use of computer modeling programs. The diversity of Ruff's approach reflects his commitment to exploring the various facets of photography, from its documentary function to its development as an aesthetic medium. His rigorous investigations into the distinctive characteristics of the medium are essential to understanding photography's place in contemporary art.