Thomas Ruff, Substrat 41 III, 2009
Thomas Ruff｜Two of Each
Saturday, October 18 － Saturday, December 13, 2025
12:00-19:00 *During ART WEEK TOKYO, between Friday, November 7 and Sunday, November 9, the opening hours change to 10:00-18:00.
*Closed on Sundays, Mondays and Holidays, except Sunday, November 9.
We are pleased to announce that Gallery Koyanagi is holding the solo exhibition Two of Each by Thomas Ruff from Saturday, October 18, to Saturday, December 13, 2025.
Ruff, who studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, is a figurehead of German photography. While following the typological perspective that characterizes the Becher School, Ruff’s practice demonstrates diverse approaches, from the act of pressing the shutter himself to the reconstruction of existing images, all threaded together by a questioning of the essence of photographic expression.
The name Thomas Ruff may have become familiar to many in Japan as a result of his first retrospective in the nation, held in 2016 at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, but in fact, his first solo exhibition here was held by Gallery Koyanagi 27 years ago, in 1998. At that time, we displayed his first series, Interieurs, as well as Sterne, which utilized negatives from official astronomical photography, and Nächte, in which urban scenes were captured with a special night-vision lens – a project that was widely discussed. Since then, we have continued to hold various exhibitions by Ruff, an artist who is always, in each show, challenging the possibilities of photography as a medium, including Substrate in 2002 and cassini + zycles in 2009.
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This exhibition is part of a project commemorating the 30th anniversary of the opening of Gallery Koyanagi, and it is the first exhibition here by the artist for 11 years, since ma.r.s and negatives in 2014. From the various significant series by Ruff that the gallery has shown, Substrate and negatives are on display again, alongside flower.s and untitled#, both of which are exhibited for the first time in Japan.
Ruff’s Substrate was used as one of the main visuals for the opening exhibition of the Mori Art Museum in 2003, and it attracted a great deal of attention. The vivid colors were actually created by multiplying images taken from Japanese adult comics and anime graphics, and digitally manipulating them with other images, in a process Ruff considers the dismantling of “image.” flower.s is a project that the artist began after acquiring photograms of flowers by Lou Landauer, a German female photographer of the 20th century. Digitally shooting plants laid on a light table and using a solarization process on a computer to reverse negative and positive, this series attempts to broaden the horizons of traditional photographic technique through digital technology in a similar way to his Photogram series. Meanwhile, for the recent series untitled#, Ruff picked up a camera for the first time in a while and shot long exposure images of wire structures spinning and shaking. The expression of experimental photography that was often pursued in the 1950s-60s is brought into the contemporary time, reflecting the play of light and shadow in lines.
As the title Two of Each suggests, two pieces from each series are shown in pairs. Once, Ruff said, “There have to be at least two copies of a photograph, otherwise it is not a photograph.” The format of presenting two pieces simultaneously emphasizes both repetition and contrast in in each work, endowing the images with a heightened ambiguity. In the tension and space created between the two pieces from each series, we aim to offer an opportunity to explore Ruff’s questioning of “what is photography?” once again.
From 5-7pm on Saturday, October 18, the artist will be present in the gallery for the reception.
The viewing room will also be open, and a piece from the series nude will be exhibited in Gallery Koyanagi for the first time.
We hope that you are interested in the opportunity presented by covering this exhibition.
