Wolfgang Tillmans - Photographs Evening Sale New York Wednesday, April 1, 2015 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
    Private Collection, Florida

  • Literature

    Hatje Cantz, Wolfgang Tillmans: Lighter, p. 362
    Phaidon, Wolfgang Tillmans, p. 110
    Tate, Wolfgang Tillmans: if one thing matters, everything matters, pp. 205, 227 and 229 for individual prints from the installation

  • Catalogue Essay

    While initially establishing himself as his generation’s documentarian with his intimate portraits of his circle of friends in the London gay community, German-born photographer Wolfgang Tillmans has since moved beyond this basic categorization to become one of the leading contemporary artists of our time. Today, Tillmans is perhaps best known for his large-scale and precise wall installations, which juxtapose works from throughout his career, presented in an array of sizes and styles. These installations demonstrate his immense and diverse body of work including, as seen in Torino Installation, studies of color, portraiture and cityscapes. While portraits such as Bernhard Wihlem, looking back, included here, are clearly personal records of specific moments in Tillmans’ own life, by combining them with the more abstracted studies of color and city views, Tillmans allows them to additionally speak to the viewers in their own personal way. Thus, by showing his work in the new context of these installations, Tillmans is precluding a single interpretation of his photographs, instead allowing the images to transform and evolve over time with each new engagement.

  • Artist Biography

    Wolfgang Tillmans

    German • 1968

    Since the early 1990s, Wolfgang Tillmans has pushed the boundaries of the photographic medium. Challenging the indexical nature traditionally associated with photography, his abstract and representational photographic bodies of work each in their own way put forward the notion of the photograph as object—rather than as a record of reality. While achieving his breakthrough with portraits and lifestyle photographs, documenting celebrity culture as well as LGBTQ communities and club culture, since the turn of the millennium the German photographer has notably created abstract work such as the Freischwimmer series, which is made in the darkroom without a camera.

    Seamlessly integrating genres, subject matters, techniques and exhibition strategies, Tillmans is known for photographs that pair playfulness and intimacy with a persistent questioning of dominant value and hierarchy structures of our image-saturated world. In 2000, Tillmans was the first photographer to receive the prestigious Turner Prize.

    View More Works

25

Torino Installation

2002
Four chromogenic prints: (i) Impossible Colour I, 2001 Unique chromogenic print 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm) (ii) Impossible Colour II, 2001 Unique chromogenic print 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm) (iii) Bernhard Willhelm, looking back, 2001 Chromogenic print 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm) Edition 2/3 + 1 (iv) Torino, 2000 Chromogenic print 72 ¾ x 61 ½ in. (184.8 x 156.2 cm) Edition 1/1 +1.
Overall 72 3/4 x 189 in. (184.8 x 480.1 cm)
One print signed in pencil with printed title, date and number on a label affixed to the reverse of the frame. This installation is unique.

Estimate
$50,000 - 70,000 

Sold for $43,750

Contact Specialist
Vanessa Kramer Hallett
Worldwide Head, Photographs

Shlomi Rabi
Head of Sale, New York

General Enquiries:
+1 212 940 1245

Photographs Evening Sale

New York 1 April 2015 6pm