Wolfgang Tillmans - Photographs New York Tuesday, April 4, 2023 | Phillips

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  • “Concorde is perhaps the last example of a techno-utopian invention from the sixties still to be operating and fully functioning today. Its futuristic shape, speed and ear-numbing thunder grabs people’s imagination today as much as it did when it first took off in 1969...”
    —Wolfgang Tillmans

    Tillmans continues, “It’s an environmental nightmare conceived in 1962 when technology and progress was the answer to everything and the sky was no longer a limit ... For the chosen few, flying Concorde is apparently a glamorous but cramped and slightly boring routine whilst to watch it in the air, landing or taking-off is a strange and free spectacle, a super modern anachronism and an image of the desire to overcome time and distance through technology.”

     

    In 2003, the Concorde took its final flight for British Airways, ultimately grounded due to rising costs and dwindling ticket sales. Tillmans’ series, which encompasses 56 images in total, has thus become a lasting document of a certain time; an archive of the past when it looked daringly to the future.

    • Provenance

      Thomas Dane Gallery, London, circa 2005

    • Literature

      Marcoci, Wolfgang Tillmans: A Reader, pp. 196-197
      Marcoci, Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear, pp. 163-64
      Hammer Museum, Wolfgang Tillmans, pp. 46-47
      Tillmans, If One Thing Matters, Everything Matters, pl. 1997-038 (Concorde L432-8), p. 131, pl. 1997-051 (Concorde L433-1), p. 136, pl. 1997-096 (Condorde L449-12) (variant)

    • Catalogue Essay

      The photographs included in this lot are as follows:

      (i) Concorde L 432-8, 1997 (blue sky)
      (ii) Concorde L449-12, 1997 (gray sky & rooftop)
      (iii) Concorde L433-1, 1997 (sunset sky)

    • 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

74

(i) Concorde L 432-8, (ii) Concorde L449-12, (iii) Concorde L433-1

1997
Three chromogenic prints.
Each 12 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. (31.8 x 21.6 cm)
(i) Signed, titled, and dated 'Wolfgang Tillmans ph. 97, pr. 698, 1/10+1' in pencil on the verso. Photographed in 1997 and printed in 1998, this work is number one from an edition of ten plus one artist's proof.
(ii) Signed, titled, and dated 'Wolfgang Tillmans ph. 497, pr. 698, 1/10+1' in pencil on the verso. Photographed in 1997 and printed in 1998, this work is number one from an edition of ten plus one artist's proof.
(iii) Signed, titled, and dated 'Wolfgang Tillmans ph. 497, pr. 698, 1/10+1' in pencil on the verso. Photographed in 1997 and printed in 1998, this work is number one from an edition of ten plus one artist's proof.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$30,000 - 50,000 

Sold for $35,560

Contact Specialist

Sarah Krueger
Head of Department, Photographs
skrueger@phillips.com


Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Chairwoman, Americas
vhallett@phillips.com

Photographs

New York Auction 4 April 2023