Sterne (Stars), 1990

The eight prints of this edition belong to Thomas Ruff’s Stars series, in which the artist appropriates astronomical negatives from the European Southern Observatory to create stark, contemplative images of the night sky. Rather than photographing celestial bodies himself, Ruff selected and cropped sections from scientific star maps, recontextualizing them as minimalist compositions. The dense fields of white dots on black evoke both wonder and detachment, inviting reflection on the relationship between scientific observation and aesthetic experience. With Stars, Ruff transforms data into image, questioning what it means to “see” the universe through mediated technologies.