A sustained meditation of observation and perception, Wolfgang Tillmans’ hypnotic Freischwimmer #84 belongs to an iconic and captivating series epitomising the 2000 Turner Prize winner’s pioneering and innovative style. Similar works were the subject of Tate Modern's recent Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition and are currently on show at the Fondation Beyeler, celebrating his iconic and recognisable oeuvre on an international platform. This marks the Fondation's first extensive engagement with photography.
Detonating from the centre of the composition, an immense explosion ignites in Freischwimmer #84, spreading Tillmans’ majestic and ethereal economy of line. As though galvanised by osmosis, a density of erupting emerald dye morphs and diffuses into pastel lime. Simultaneously, thin reels of colour float and curve, misting into opaque clouds of pigment before unravelling and dissolving across the surface of the image. An enigma, the present work is non-representational yet it contains a quasi-figurative reality; the composition alludes to the natural elements – a landscape drawn into abstraction awash with gusts of wind and exquisite mist formations. Referring to German levels of swimming proficiency, the title immediately directs audiences toward the aquatic, through viscous liquid and its biochemical reactions. The majestic void of the composition and swirling illuminated rays question the relationship between light and perspective. Similar to Sigmar Polke’s later Dispersion pictures, the work masterfully celebrates the delicate nature of perception and the power of the image as a communicative tool. Manipulating and reshaping art historical preconceptions of visual material, the artist utilises chemistry to critique the puzzles and impossibilities of illusion in contemporary media. An alchemist, Tillmans transforms and employs the image to question the viewer’s subjective means of comprehension.
Divorcing photography from its essential apparatus, Tillmans exposes photographic paper, manipulating light as though it were painterly pigment. Through the use of a light pen, the artist sculpts and traces his subject, the plane of the work recording movement in time. The irregularities of light leaving the composition are open to unintended yet harmonious optical effects. Chance, therefore, plays a crucial role in his mechanical technique. As Tillmans comments, ‘what connects all my work is finding the right balance between intention and chance, doing as much as I can and knowing when to let go’ (Wolfgang Tillmans in conversation with Dominic Eicher, Frieze, issue 118, October 2008, online).
‘I like the idea of the photograph as something that joins me to the world, that connects me to others, that I can share. I can get in touch with somebody when they recognize a feeling…it’s the sense that “I’m not alone.” That’s the driving force behind sharing these things—that I want to find connections in people. I believe that every thought and idea has to be somehow rendered through personal experience, and then generalized’ (Wolfgang Tillmans, in ‘Gil Blank and Wolfgang Tillmans in conversation’, Influence, issue 2, 2004, p. 119). Interrogating the very nature of photography, Freischwimmer #84 echoes the avant-garde experiments of Man Ray and György Kepes, whilst demonstrating an affinity to modernist Colour Field painting. Like his predecessors who challenged the traditional superiority of painting over photography, Tillmans’ present composition mediates these different mediums, the motivation and technique emphasising the importance of the artwork itself. Creating an illusionary plane, the artist maintains a surrealist stance whilst addressing contemporary issues of perception. Tillmans does not seek to depict reality, rather he interprets and recreates it, painting with light to achieve a unique visual lexicon free of hierarchy and ideology.
