Deux Femmes
vol. 29
Thomas Ruff photographs
Ingo Schulze text
Atelier Bow Wow case
Here Ingo Schulze makes use of a first-person narrative to blend reality and fiction. Again the German writer reveals his talent for making the apparent banality of everyday life speak of the great ruptures of contemporary history. East Germany’s oppressive regime is evoked, for example, by means of a mere anecdote—a few words exchanged between a Parisian restaurant owner and a poet from East Germany.
Thomas Ruff opts for a similar process, invoking politics but from the sidelines. In an exchange with Philip Pocock dating from 1993, Thomas Ruff declares that his portraits make explicit reference to police surveillance in West Germany during the violent decades of the sixties and seventies.
The Japanese architecture agency Atelier Bow Wow has chosen to assign a separate casing for each of the three series of portraits by Thomas Ruff, with each volume forming the archetypal shape of a house with a saddle roof. An Urushi black lacquer has been applied to the surfaces of the three modules.
Each section of the polyptyque with Ingo Schulze’s text running through is printed in a different colour, colours taken from Thomas Ruff’s photographs, and shaped in line with our archetypal design of a peaked roof.
Description:
39 original signed photographs (chromogenic prints),
set in photo-corners
3 Urushi lacquered cases
1. 25 x 32 x 5 cm / 2. 29 x 20,5 x 5 cm / 3. 26 x 26,5 x 5 cm
Text in French and English
Limited edition of 40 copies + 8 H.C
April 2013
Graphic design: Olivier Andreotti