"Facing a work of art is like being in front of a mirror."
Contemporary German photographer Thomas Ruff is known for his portraits, which are often referred to as “coldly objective”. It is true that Ruff's photographs are smooth and very realistic, so much so that they cease to play any internal relationship with the image. This is the reason why Ruff's work thwarts any attempt to search for clues that would allow the image to pass through. However, there is a paradox that the artist insinuates in his works: Ruff, by going in the direction of radically objective images, does not hesitate to introduce the problematic of the photographic image, both the power of analogy to the real world and the most total artificiality. A spiritual heir to Warhol in his dream of "seeing mechanically", the art of Thomas Ruff, at heart, never ceases to question this moment of the encounter between the work and the viewer in the uniqueness of the aesthetic experience.