PKM Gallery opens its doors in 2024 with «d.o.pe.» by Thomas Rupp (b. 1958), a master of contemporary photography. In this solo exhibition held in Korea for the first time in 20 years, his latest photo series, which has the same title as the exhibition, will be unveiled for the first time in Asia. The artist will visit Korea during the opening week of the exhibition, and an artist talk will be held at the gallery on February 22nd at 3pm.
‹d.o.pe.› (2022-), introduced in this exhibition, is Loop's photo series based on a fractal structure, in which self-similar units unfold on a huge tapestry screen up to 290cm long. The title 'd.o.pe.' is inspired by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)'s The Doors of Perception (1954). In this autobiographical essay, Huxley explains that humans do not have chemical or biological reactions. It was believed that one could expand one's consciousness and transcend oneself. Loop agreed with Huxley's thoughts and projected fractal structures, found both in nature and artificially, into his work in a psychedelic form. As a result, the difference between real reality and created reality becomes meaningless, and the viewer experiences visual transcendence.
Thomas Ruff, from Germany, began to gain fame as a key member of the Düsseldorf Becher school of photography in the late 1980s and has published about 25 photo series to date, including the representative works ‹Porträts› ‹Nudes› ‹Substrate›. It would not be an exaggeration to say that his 40-year career of constantly exploring and challenging new technologies and concepts of photography in the midst of an era transitioning from analog to digital is in line with the history of photography in the 20th and 21st centuries. From classic portraits to images collected and edited from data floating around the Internet, images transmitted from satellites, and digital images automatically generated by algorithms, his sensitive photographic work expands our horizons and continues to attract attention on the international stage. there is.
Loop has exhibited at leading art institutions around the world, including solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Portrait Museum in London, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, and K20 in Düsseldorf, as well as group exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Wien, Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Museum of Modern Art in Basel, and Tate Modern in London. An exhibition was held in His work has been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Washington, D.C. It is housed in the Hirshhorn Museum and the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris. Currently he lives and works in Düsseldorf.

           Thomas Ruff