Wolfgang Tillmans

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Wolfgang Tillmans (born August 16, 1968 in Remscheid ) is a German photographer and artist who lives and works in Berlin and London . His oeuvre is characterized on the one hand by careful observation of his environment and on the other by researching the fundamentals of photography. In 2000 he was the first photographer and non-English native to be awarded the renowned Turner Prize .

Wolfgang Tillmans, 2013

Life

Wolfgang Tillmans was born on August 16, 1968 in Remscheid in the Bergisches Land. He was interested in during school hours for Photography and various layout -forms and collected photographs. Through visits to museums in Düsseldorf and the Ludwig Museum in Cologne , between the ages of 14 and 16 he came into contact with the photo-based art of Gerhard Richter , Sigmar Polke , Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol , which was one of his first influences. In 1983 he came to England as a language student and got to know British youth culture and the local style and music magazines such as iD .

From 1987 to 1990 Wolfgang Tillmans lived in Hamburg, where his first solo exhibitions also took place in Café Gnosa , Front and Fabrik-Foto-Forum. He got to know the local rave scene in 1988 and began documenting this emerging subculture. His snapshots and portraits of young people, mainly musicians, were published in the magazines iD , Tempo , Spex and Prinz from 1988 onwards . For a short time he was co-editor of Spex .

Wolfgang Tillmans in the 1990s

From 1990 to 1992 he studied at Bournemouth & Poole College of Art and Design in southern England. After completing his studies, he first moved to London and then moved to New York for a year in 1994 , where he met the German painter Jochen Klein in 1995, with whom he moved back to London in 1995 and lived with him until Klein died in 1997 as a result of his AIDS illness .

After a visiting professorship at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts from 1998 to 1999 and an Honorary Fellowship at the Arts Institute in Bournemouth (2001), Tillmans was Professor of Interdisciplinary Art at the State University of Fine Arts - Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main from 2003 to 2006 .

In 2001, Wolfgang Tillmans won a competition from the City of Munich to design an AIDS memorial, which was then erected at Sendlinger Tor based on his designs. In 2002 he shot a video clip for the pop band Pet Shop Boys for their single Home & Dry , which mainly consisted of documentary recordings of mice living in the London Underground. In April 2006, Tillmans opened the non-commercial exhibition space in London Between Bridges with works by New York artist and activist David Wojnarowicz , who died of complications from AIDS in 1992 and in Tillmans through his writings and his appearance in Rosa von Praunheim's film Silence = Death a had made a lasting impression. In this small gallery, in the house of his London studio, he mainly showed exhibitions of political art from positions of other artists, which he considered to be neglected. The showroom has been in Berlin-Kreuzberg since 2014.

In 2009 he received the culture award of the German Society for Photography. He has been a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts since 2012 and of the Royal Academy of Arts , London (RA) since 2013 . On November 30, 2015, Wolfgang Tillmans received the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography . In 2018 he received the Federal Cross of Merit and the Goslarer Kaiserring .

Since the 2000s, his work has been shown in large museum solo exhibitions, and from 2012 to 2013 as part of a comprehensive retrospective that toured South America. The Kunsthalle Zürich (2012) and Les Rencontres d'Arles in France (2013) presented works from his latest group of works, New World . In 2012, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm showed a selection of works from the past 25 years, which could be seen in 2013 at the K21 , Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf. In 2014, installations by Wolfgang Tillmans were shown at the 8th Berlin Biennale , Manifesta 10 and as part of collection presentations at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen and the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. His video installation Book for Architects , which made its debut at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014, was then shown at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. In 2015 he opened a large-scale solo exhibition at the National Museum of Art, Osaka and Gothenburg on the occasion of the Hasselblad Award. At the beginning of 2016 he showed a large-scale overview exhibition at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves in Porto, and in 2017 at the Tate Modern, London, and at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel. Since 2018, Wolfgang Tillmans has shown numerous exhibition venues in African capitals such as Kinshasa, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Addis Ababa and Yaoundé with the ifa touring exhibition “FRAGILE”. In 2019 and 2020 there were solo exhibitions at the Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain, Nîmes, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and the WIELS in Brussels.

In 1994 Tillmans exhibited music for the first time in addition to his pictures in the group exhibition “L'hiver de l'amour” at the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris . He could use a room where he played techno . In doing so, he pointed out the discrepancy that there are no cultural institutions that convey recorded music in the quality that was achieved in the production studio with great effort. The concern to create a space for a shared experience of recorded music and thus to show appreciation for recorded music resulted in various events with the title “Playback Room” in his Artspace Between Bridges . In 2016, the Lenbachhaus in Munich set up a room with a high-end music system with him, for which he created two playlists.

Wolfgang Tillmans' work is in the possession of international museums and private collections. In an interview with Zeit in 2000 he said: "Although I know that the camera is lying, I still hold on to the idea of ​​a photographic truth". In response to questions about artists who would have inspired him, Tillmans repeatedly named the Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664).

As part of the Brexit , referendum on whether the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union , Tillmans designed a poster campaign against Brexit. Due to EU-wide political shifts to the right and the associated anti-EU sentiment in many countries, the “Protect the European Union” poster campaign followed, which was translated into 23 languages. On the occasion of the federal election in Germany in 2017, he campaigned against right-wing nationalism and for more voter turnout with a wide-ranging advertising and poster campaign. Together with Stephan Petermann and Rem Koolhaas , in spring 2018 he called on artists and creative people in the EU to take part in an advertising campaign for the 2019 European elections . At a four-day Eurolab with workshops and interviews in Amsterdam, ideas were to be developed on how to strengthen and rekindle the citizens' enthusiasm for Europe. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic , Tillmans developed the 2020Solidarity project with Between Bridges, which aims to help cultural and musical places, social projects, independent spaces and publications that are existentially threatened by the current crisis through the sale of posters designed by various artists.

Tillmans has lived with HIV since 1997 , but did not make his infection public for the time being in order to "neither be a victim nor make it my cause". For him, “dealing with HIV is normal” and he wanted to “protect his art”. In 2015 he showed a photo of a box with numerous containers of HIV drugs, some of which were labeled with his name, in an exhibition entitled “17 years' supply”. The New York Times interpreted this as part of an apparent development by Tillmans towards "total transparency in his life and photography".

plant

Beginnings

One of Tillmans' best known pictures: "Lutz & Alex sitting in the trees" (1992). According to The Guardian, the couple were portrayed here as "naive but knowing" and as a kind of "Adam and Eve of the ecstasy generation".

Wolfgang Tillmans became known in the early nineties for his style-defining portraits of friends and other young people in his immediate vicinity. His photos, for example from the European Gay Pride in London (1992) or the Love Parade in Berlin (1992), appeared in magazines such as iD, Spex , Interview, SZ-Magazin and Butt , which established his reputation as a prominent witness of current social trends . Since then he has been regarded as a “chronicler of his generation, especially the London club and gay scene”. The series with his friends Lutz and Alex, also first published in iD in 1992, are today artistic and documentary icons of the 1990s.

"Images to recognize the world"

Since then, Wolfgang Tillmans' photographic work has expanded to include a wide variety of genres and photographic practices. Supported by an aesthetic as well as political interest in drafts of reality and claims to truth, also with regard to homosexuality and gender issues, portraits, still lifes, sky shots (such as the famous cycle of Concorde photos), astronomical observations, surveillance and landscape images were created. Wolfgang Tillmans puts it this way:

"I take pictures to see the world"

- Wolfgang Tillmans

Wolfgang Tillmans stages his photographs in different sizes and formats, with or without a frame, in precisely designed all-over wall installations and sometimes combines them with photocopies or magazine and newspaper pages (especially in the installations entitled “Soldiers - The Nineties “Became known). Some of the pictures are attached to the wall with special adhesive tape, presented in showcases or arranged in expansive table installations (“truth study center”).

Abstractions

Freischwimmer 26, 2003

In 1998 Tillmans first showed "pictures not taken with the camera" in exhibitions. For the “Silver” group of works, photo paper, unexposed or after it has been exposed to different colored light sources, is passed through the developing machine, in which there are still various traces of used chemicals, especially silver nitrate (hence the name 'Silver'), as well as Water were left. As the paper goes through this process, streaks, scratches, pressure marks and deposits occur, which not only change the color, but also the physical surface of the photo paper. The “silver” works thus arise from the interplay of a mechanical process and a mineral-chemical “natural process”. The works (especially "Blushes" and "Freischwimmer"), which were also created without a camera in the darkroom , with their partly poetic, freely abstract, partly physical-looking fine streaks of color and filigree patterns present photography as a self-referential medium that becomes a field of experimentation for the creation of new types Image structures will. These “abstract” works now appear (also in the wall installations) next to the representational photographs, which in the works of the “paper drop” series (since 2001) now themselves address the image carrier. Here, rolled sheets of paper are presented as sculptural objects, which create a mysterious topology from the two-dimensional white world and photography leads to the exploration of haptic and psychological zones. The step from photography as a carrier of meaning to the object is most consistently taken in the works of the “Lighter” series (since 2006). These works consist of photo paper, usually with folds or creases, framed in plexiglass covers.

Photocopies

Lighter V, 2006

Starting in 2006, Wolfgang Tillmans shows how surface structure and image depth can mutually influence one another with large-format works based on analogue photocopies. Thematically, he ties in with early work that emerged from experiments with an old Canon photocopier in the late 1980s. The uncontrolled contrasts and pigment particles of the pictures created on the old devices are only really clear through the considerable enlargement (framed approx. 260 × 180 cm) and create both strange and concrete image effects.

Table work ("truth study center")

Paper drop (window), 2006

Going even further than in the wall installations by Wolfgang Tillmans, the table work of the “truth study center” (since 2005) combines the most varied of image formats and contents. In addition to extracts from books, journals or magazines, as well as postcards, packaging and other collected material, I have arranged my own photographs under glass plates. These works have a more political orientation and address, among other things, "the exercise of power behind the ideologies of Islamic fundamentalism, Catholicism and capitalism" ( The Guardian ).

Turning to digital photography, "New World" (since 2009)

Market, 2012

After Tillmans an analogue SLR film camera of the brand for over two decades almost exclusively Contax had 50-mm lens used, he turned to digital photography to in 2009. In 2012, Tillmans described the associated switch from camera viewfinder to built-in monitor as “turning the psychology of photography completely upside down, which was always a dialogue between the photographer, the object and the imaginary image that one imagines, thinks , hoped ", while the higher resolution of digital photographs follows" a change in the whole world ":" In the last few years everything has become HD, so I find it inevitable that the inaccessibility of this density of information can be found in my own pictures. As a result, it describes my feeling of perception quite well again today. "

In his exhibition and book project “New World” (since 2009) Tillmans used the possibilities of digital photography and printing technology for the first time. To do this, he traveled to all five continents as far as Tierra del Fuego and Tasmania. According to the New York Times, with this project he led "an inside debate about new printing methods that put painting and photography on an equal footing, but [also began] a public discourse on the absurdity of the fixed image in a world of moving targets."

Book for Architects

At the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014, Wolfgang Tillmans presented a video installation of 450 photographs of houses, interiors, and exterior facades under the title Book for Architects . The sequence and arrangement of the images reflect his view of architecture in the form of “control, chance, self-determination and external determination”. Tillmans often finds buildings very pretentious and as an expression of the vanity of their creators. At the same time, they irrevocably pushed their way into the reality of people who could not defend themselves against it.

Solo exhibitions (selection)

  • 2020: "Today Is The First Day", Wiels, Brussels
  • 2019: Panoramabar, Berlin (permanent installation)
  • 2019: "Peach alive", Galería Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid
  • 2019: Maureen Paley, London
  • 2018: "War Requiem", English National Opera, London (stage design); traveled to National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, Taipei (2020)
  • 2018: "Rebuilding the Future", Irish Museum of Modern Art , Dublin
  • 2018/19: "Wolfgang Tillmans - Kaiserring Bearer of the City of Goslar 2018", Mönchehaus Museum , Goslar
  • 2018: "How likely is it that only I am right in this matter?", David Zwirner, New York
  • 2018: "Qu'est ce qui est différent", Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain, Nîmes
  • 2018: "Fest", Buchholz Gallery , Cologne
  • 2018: "FRAGILE", Musée d'Art Contemporain et Multimédias, Kinshasa, DR Congo; traveled to Circle Art Gallery and GoDown Arts Center Nairobi, Kenya, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, Modern Art Museum-Gebre Kristos Desta Center, Addis Ababa (2019) and Galerie d'Art Contemporain de Yaoundé (GACY), Yaoundé, Cameroon (2019 )
  • 2017: "There were 30 years between 1943 and 1973. 30 years from 1973 was the year 2003", Kunstverein in Hamburg
  • 2017: Fondation Beyeler , Riehen / Basel
  • 2017: "2017", Tate Modern , London
  • 2016: "Studio", Buchholz Gallery , Berlin
  • 2015: "Wolfgang Tillmans-Hasselblad Award 2015", Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg, Sweden
  • 2015: "Your Body is Yours", The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan
  • 2015: "Lignine Duress", Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
  • 2015: "Book for Architects", The Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York
  • 2014: "Affinity", Wako Works of Art, Tokyo
  • 2013: MAVI - Museo de Artes Visuales, Santiago de Chile
  • 2012: Moderna Museet, Stockholm
  • 2011: "Zachęta Encouragement", Zachęta National Art Gallery , Warsaw
  • 2010: Serpentine Gallery , London
  • 2006: "Freedom from the Known", Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
  • 2005: "Truth Study Center", Maureen Paley, London
  • 2004: "Freischwimmer", Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo
  • 2003: "if one thing matters, everything matters", Tate Britain, London
  • 2002: "Vue d'en Haut", Palais de Tokyo, Paris
  • 1999: "Part I: Recent Works / part II: Concorde", Wako Works of Art, Tokyo
  • 1998: "Fruicciones", Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Espacio Uno, Madrid
  • 1997: "I didn't inhale", Chisenhale Gallery, London
  • 1995: Regen Projects, Los Angeles
  • 1994: Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
  • 1993: Interim Art, London
  • 1993: Buchholz Gallery, Cologne
  • 1988: "Approaches", Café Gnosa, Hamburg

Monographs, catalogs and artist books (selection)

  • Fragile. exh. cat. Ifa tour, Stuttgart 2018 (Musée d'Art Contemporain et Multimédias, Kinshasa, DR Congo; Circle Art Gallery and GoDown Arts Center Nairobi, Kenya; Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg; Modern Art Museum-Gebre Kristos Desta Center, Addis Ababa (2019) and Galerie d'Art Contemporain de Yaoundé (GACY), Yaoundé, Cameroon (2019))
  • Today Is The First Day. exh. cat. IMMA, Dublin and WIELS, Brussels 2018, ISBN 978-3-96098-754-3 .
  • Kaiserring bearer of the city of Goslar 2018. exh. cat. Mönchehaus Museum Goslar 2018, ISBN 978-3-9819159-2-1 .
  • DZHK Book 2018. exh. cat. David Zwirner, Hong Kong 2018, ISBN 978-1-941701-94-2 .
  • What is different? exh. cat. Carré d'Art - Musée d'art contemporain, Nîmes, Jahresring 64, Sternberg Press, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-95679-403-2 .
  • Hamburg Süd / Nee IYaow eow eow. exh. cat. Kunstverein in Hamburg 2017, OCLC 1086495987 .
  • Wolfgang Tillmans. exh. cat. Fondation Beyeler, Basel / Riehen 2017, ISBN 978-3-7757-4328-0 .
  • 2017. exh. cat. Tate Modern, London 2017, ISBN 978-1-84976-445-2 .
  • On the Verge of Visibility. exh. cat. Museu Serralves, Porto 2016, ISBN 978-972-739-335-0 .
  • Conor Donlon. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-86335-941-6 .
  • What's wrong with redistribution? exh. cat. The Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-86335-822-8 .
  • Your body is yours. exh. cat. The National Museum of Art, Osaka, ISBN
  • The Cars. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-86335-752-8 .
  • Wolfgang Tillmans. Phaidon Press, London 2014, ISBN 978-0-7148-6704-5 .
  • Wolfgang Tillmans. Exhib. Cat.Moderna Museet Stockholm, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf 2012, ISBN 978-3-941773-20-2 .
  • New world. Taschen, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-8365-3974-6 .
  • FESPA Digital / FRUIT LOGISTICA. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-86335-211-0 .
  • Abstract Pictures. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2011, ISBN 978-3-7757-2743-3 .
  • Wolfgang Tillmans. Exhib. Cat.Spentine Gallery, London 2010, ISBN 978-3-86560-853-6 .
  • Lighter. Exhib. Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-7757-2187-5 .
  • Wako Book 4. Wako Works of Art, Tokyo 2008, ISBN 978-4-902070-31-6 .
  • Hans Ulrich Obrist. The Conversation Series. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-86560-133-9 .
  • Manual. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-86560-132-2 .
  • Freedom from the Known. Exhib. Cat. P, p. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York 2006, ISBN 3-86521-263-8 .
  • Truth study center. Taschen, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-8228-4640-6 .
  • If one thing matters, everything matters. Exhib. Cat.Tate Britain, London 2003, ISBN 3-7757-1327-1 .
  • Still life. Exhib. Harvard University Art Museum 2002, ISBN 1-891771-26-4 .
  • Supervision / View from Above. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2001, ISBN 3-8228-7881-2 .
  • Portraits. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-88375-506-0 .
  • WSoldiers - The Nineties. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-88375-377-7 .
  • Castle. Taschen, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-8228-7881-2 .
  • Who dares to love lives tomorrow. Exhib. Cat. Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg 1996, ISBN 3-89322-865-9 .
  • Wolfgang Tillmans. Taschen, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-8228-1984-0 .

Prices (selection)

Web links

Commons : Wolfgang Tillmans  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Interviews

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f tillmans.co.uk biography
  2. ↑ a b c d theguardian.com
  3. ↑ Axel Schock, Karen-Susan Fessel: OUT! - 800 famous lesbians, gays and bisexuals. Querverlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89656-111-1 .
  4. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from October 28, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ theguardian.com
  6. ^ Gabriela Walde: Wolfgang Tillmans opens a new gallery in Berlin-Kreuzberg. In: Berliner Morgenpost . 19th December 2013.
  7. ↑ a b Entry on the website of the Office of the Federal President: Award ceremony on the Day of German Unity on October 2, 2018 , viewed on September 28, 2018.
  8. ↑ moenchehaus.de
  9. ↑ Münchner Merkur: "Playback Room": This music is ready for a museum ( memento from March 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), February 19, 2016.
  10. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: The perfect sound can be heard in the Lenbachhaus , February 15, 2016.
  11. ↑ guggenheimcollection ( Memento of July 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) - works by Tillman in the Guggenheim collection
  12. ^ Hanno Rauterberg: Perfectionist of the sloppy . In: The time . October 26, 2000, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed on May 22, 2016]).
  13. ↑ http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/history/tillmanswebchat.htm ( Memento from February 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ iD October 1998, p 181st
  15. ↑ Taking a stand against Brexit . In: ZEIT Online . Hamburg April 28, 2016 ( zeit.de [accessed on May 25, 2016]).
  16. ↑ betweenbridges.net
  17. ↑ tillmans.co.uk
  18. ↑ a b c Catrin Lorch: Wolfgang Tillmans. In: sueddeutsche.de . March 30, 2018, accessed April 6, 2018 .
  19. ↑ Ideas competition: Tillmans and Koolhaas call for an image campaign for the EU. In: monopol-magazin.de. March 26, 2018, accessed April 6, 2018 .
  20. ↑ The uncool becomes cool . In: FAS Frankfurt May 1, 2016 ( genios.de [accessed on May 25, 2016]).
  21. ^ A b Roberta Smith: Review: Wolfgang Tillmans, a Photographer Showing His Life as an Open Book . In: The New York Times . October 13, 2015, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed May 30, 2016]).
  22. ↑ kunstsammlung.de
  23. ↑ nymag.com
  24. ↑ iksmedienarchiv: WOLFGANG TILLMANS - KUNSTSAMMLUNG NRW. March 7, 2013, accessed May 30, 2016 .
  25. ↑ washingtonpost.com
  26. ↑ artintelligence.net
  27. ↑ a b Timo Feldhaus: Wolfgang Tillmans - The photographer about HD worlds, digital photography and Berlin tourists de: Bug 165, September 2012.
  28. ^ A b Karen Rosenberg: Wolfgang Tillmans: 'From Neue Welt' . In: The New York Times . May 17, 2013, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed May 22, 2016]).
  29. ↑ uncubemagazine: A Warm Eye - Wolfgang Tillmans on his "Book for Architects" , June 27, 2014.
  30. ↑ Bremen Art Prize and Art Prize of Böttcherstrasse in Bremen 1985–2007 ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) kunsthalle-bremen.de
  31. ↑ Wolfgang Tillmans receives Goslarer Kaiserring 2018. Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 29, 2018, accessed on August 25, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Tillmans, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer
DATE OF BIRTH 16th August 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Remscheid