Thomas Ruff (*1958)

Thomas Ruff’s Substratum series consists of paintings in which very different colours run into one another, mix together and slip over and under one another. Any reference to seen reality or a pictorial world existing before the eye has vanished. The source for the paintings lies in Japanese comics from the internet, as they have precise, sharp coloured edges, unusual colour combinations and a fictional pictorial narrative. In the production of the pictures, Ruff can exert only a relatively small amount of control over the process of transposition, as the changes in colour and depth cannot be calculated. The works thus correspond to a self-defining, self-producing system that takes its bearings from internal coherence and contradiction. ___