Thomas Ruff’s constellations are among his most iconic motifs. Motivated by his early fascination with astronomy and the universe, the artist’s work began using external images with his series “Sterne” (1989-1992). In 1989 Thomas Ruff acquired a copy of the negative archive of the European Southern Observatory (an international research center in Chile) taken with a special telescopic lens to document the visible universe. Ruff selected sections of the negatives and enlarged them. The resulting compositions do not follow any scientific methodology. Instead, Ruff’s visual criteria manifests an ancient search for meaning in the sky. Ruff’s series “d.o.pe.” follows this tradition and equally embodies an interest in the natural sciences – in this case mathematics. For “d.o.pe.” Thomas Ruff used computer software to generate psychedelic-looking images that draw the viewer in with their richly colored fractals.
The fractal – a self-similar, geometric structure consisting of scaled-down versions of itself – was first introduced as a mathematical term by Benoît Mandelbrot in the 1970s. Mandelbrot succeeded in visualizing this structure with the help of early computer representations. The series title is an acronym of Aldous Huxley’s autobiographical essay “The Doors of Perception” from 1954, in which he describes his experiences of consciousness after taking mescaline to expand his mind. In his series “d.o.pe.” Thomas Ruff skillfully combines these two phenomena with the latest software of the 2020s, allowing us to immerse ourselves in seemingly endless dimensions in which the color only takes on its three-dimensional effect through the image carrier. The artificially generated images are printed on velour carpet. The velvety surface of the fabric enhances the perception of depth in these fascinating visual worlds.
The show is on view until May 3rd, 2025.