Thomas Ruff (*1958) and James Welling (*1951) are two of the most well-known photographic artists of the present day. They explore in their works the conditions of visual perception, also in relation to our use of the photographic ap­paratus, and the conditioning of our view of the world through photographic images. The exhi­bition »Dark Matter. Thomas Ruff and James Welling« and the accompanying catalog of the same name focus on works that wrest new pos­sibilities from the photographic image and ­expand our capacity for imagination. We ­perceive our environment subjectively; we see and feel it against the backdrop of what we can grasp and understand in images and words that have been handed to us. About eighty percent of the matter in the universe consists of a substance we know little about: Dark Matter. Does the same apply to the ­photographic image? Does it hide more than it shows?