Thomas Ruff's 'Tableaux chinois' disappoints at David Zwirner Paris

Thomas Ruff's first Paris exhibition at David Zwirner, running from January 14 to March 6, 2021, presents his 'Tableaux chinois' series, which critic Étienne Hatt finds disappointing. The series, begun in 2019, uses enlarged offset-print reproductions of Chinese propaganda photographs from the Mao era, originally published in the magazine 'Chine' aimed at France. Ruff, a former student of the Bechers at Düsseldorf, is known for analyzing visual representations, as in his 'jpgs' series that highlighted digital compression. Here, he overlays a pixel grid not present in the original high-resolution scans. Hatt argues this formal gesture lacks meaning, reducing the work to mere surface effect and digital mannerism, unlike Ruff's earlier critical investigations.