For many decades Haus Lange and Haus Esters have been used for the presentation of contemporary art. Though every exhibition almost inevitably stimulates one to look at the architecture from a new perspective or, at least, to pay more attention to it than is the case with many other museums, over a long term even such masterpieces of architecture become invisible in a sense. Getting used to the buildings leads to a casualness in dealing with them which replaces one's awareness of something special by a pragmatism adjusted to the respective project. The image of the architecture by Mies van der Rohe disappears in favor of an active handling of it - everyday life in a piece of architectural history.

The necessary restoration of the seventy year old buildings from 1997 to 2000, during which no exhibitions could be presented, interrupted this particular normalcy - a pause of reflection not only for the institution. Also the houses themselves were perceived in a new way. Details came to light, new connections became visible, the architecture itself became the subject. For the regular users this also led to a disillusionment, or better: that which usually worked as a familiar background for the changing events now became an object and became the subject of analysis and criticism.

Anticipation of the end of the restoration then led to the idea to make the image of the buildings the subject of the first exhibition afterwards. Yet it was not to be an exhibition about architecture, leading a didactic discourse and for example focusing on the buildings and their pictorial perception. The subject in this place is still visual art, though today this term seems to be rather equivocal. Thomas Ruff is an artist who is interested in the possibility and impossibility of pictures, who constantly explores the limits of making pictures through different approaches. He is an artist who works in the middle of the great illusion of his profession, i.e. photography, as a realist without illusions and shows us what we think while seeing.

My contact to Thomas Ruff is based on my constant interest in his work which since more than ten years has been reflected in several exhibitions and a number of purchases of different works. (That his edition of two "Night" photos was a rather considerable contribution to the campaign for the restoration of the two Krefeld houses shall only be mentioned in parentheses.) My proposal was that he should deal with some buildings by Mies van der Rohe constructed at the same time as Haus Lange and Haus Esters. Such a commission did not seem improper to me since I knew that his increasingly complex collaboration with the architects, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, had begun in a similar way. And I also knew about his pragmatic attitude towards the profession of the photographer. In the beginning, of course, the end was open, one could not foresee whether the project would be successful. A so to speak positive handicap accompanied the work right from the start: on his trips to Brno and Barcelona as well as on several visits to Krefeld, the familiar pictures of Mies' architecture were constantly around. Again the photographer had to deal with objects whose "faces" were familiar because of innumerable and formative images. As in some of his other series of works, a genre and its history surrounded (and somehow obstructed) his access to the subject. Yet this is one of the points of departure of his art in general. In the course of one year an idea developed into a new series of works whose title, the initials l. m. v. d. r., only slightly conceals that it is also about a legend of modernism.

The catalogue accompanying this exhibition will be published in two parts: volume one includes the images of the Villa Tugendhat in Brno (built in 1928-1930) and of the Barcelona pavilion (built in 1928-1929). An essay by Rita Kersting analyses their importance in the context of Thomas Ruff's other works. Volume two will be published a little later and will combine the images of the Krefeld houses (built in 1928-1930) with some reflections on the relationship of these photographs to the real buildings. (...)

Julian Heynen

The series l.m.v.d.r began as a commission, much as though the artist had been invited to make a portrait of a particular person. The items to be portrayed had already largely been selected and the place where the pictures were (first) to be shown had already been decided. Beyond this what was expected of the artist was left basically open. It was left entirely up to him how closely he would stick to the proposed topic or might even take it simply as a starting point, as a premise, or just as a background. The photographer already knew the houses; he was familiar with them from personal experience as well as from the numerous - many striking - pictures that already existed. This was not necessarily an advantage, and in the past there had even been a stage when he felt he could not take photographs of buildings of this kind:

"I am intensely bored by the idea of photographing Haus Lange and Haus Esters, because as objects they are so beautiful that I couldn't possibly make an interesting picture of them."

The first thing to do was to survey the existing images, to discover if there were any that might - despite everything - awaken the artist's interest in the subject matter. And it seems that already at this stage the pictorial afterlife and broad visual expectations that one has of Mies van der Rohe's designs already provided a first foothold for the photographer. The next phase took place on site in that real yet imaginary realm which lies on and around the axis that links the building, the camera and the photographer's head. Some of the artist's expectations of the photographability of the buildings immediately proved to be well-founded, leading him to reject some possible motifs while he pursued others specifically because of their very familiarity. In other areas he discovered unexpected perspectives and details. This all led to a relatively manageable body of raw material which was initially stored in the file marked "I.m.v.d.r.".

The very first shots already showed that while there was a place for the large individual picture, in this situation stereoscopic photography seemed to provide a particularly useful approach to the subject matter. Could it be that these two different pictorial processes might reflect the basic duality of the interior and exterior of the architectural design, giving expression to the official and more intimate face of the two houses? At the very least this approach seemed to contain in it the seeds of a possible structure for the project, which of course acquired further dimensions over time as it progressed.

The next steps were taken in the artist's atelier. The old-fashioned term is all the more fining here in the sense that aside from the selection of motifs work has been relocated to electronic picture-viewing equipment, which nevertheless creates a situation similar to that of the painter at his easel. It is an intimate relationship - with the artist confronting the reality captured in the enclosed space between the screen, his eye, his consciousness and the manipulations that may be carried out using keyboard, mouse and programme. This little world was the scene of the transformations that constructed new pictures from the mechanized documentation of reality, the crucial earlier images and the artist's own views and thoughts. Retouching as synthesis - an electronically powered pictorial generator of a quite particular kind. Lastly the pictures were sized, framed and set up for stereoscopic viewing. (...)

Julian Heynen