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Overview
Distilling vertical strands of black matter across an abstract ground of meandering reds, Freischwimmer 27 compellingly exemplifies Wolfgang Tillmans eponymous series, which explores the visual qualities and parameters of light as a medium. Though the present image has been produced without a camera, a subject, or a negative, the artist asserts that it represents, along with its sister Freischwimmer works, the purest form of photography. To create these prints, Tillmans exposes photographic paper in a darkroom, digitises the result on a computer, and enlarges the luminographs to monumental proportions. Subsequently, he presents them as unframed inkjet prints, or large framed mounted prints, in fine producing thin reels of floating colour, misting into opaque clouds of pigment. Musing on the irreducibly important element of chance in his mechanical technique, Tillmans remarked, ‘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’.1 Having just had a major survey at WIELS, Brussels, in 2020, following two major solo exhibitions in 2018 at Tate Modern, London, and the Beyeler Foundation, Basel, Tillmans will once again be the subject of institutional acclaim on the occasion of his upcoming retrospective slated to take place at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2021.
'The true authenticity of photographs for me is that they usually manipulate and lie about what is in front of the camera, but never lie about the intentions behind the camera.' —Wolfgang TillmansBorne from the theoretical synthesis of water and light, Freischwimmer owes its name to the swimming certificate German children are given at a beginner's level. ‘Literally, Freischwimmer means something like “swimming freely”’, the artist explained. ‘And as the title suggests, and the work intimates, a sense of fluidity is evoked in the mind of the viewer even though these pictures were essentially made “dry” – only with light and my hand’.2 A visual enigma, profoundly non-representational in subject matter, the present work nonetheless contains a quasi-figurative reality, as it forms the loose delineation of a natural landscape, awash with gusts of wind and mist formations. A sublime example from Tillmans’ now instantly recognisable series, Freischwimmer 27 was conceived the same year as the artist's major solo exhibition at Tate Britain, London, and just a few years following his reception of the Turner Prize, in 2000.
Gyorgy Kepes, Untitled (gelatin silver print), gelatin silver print, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, USA. © Estate of György Kepes (Imre Kepes and Juliet Kepes Stone), Image: Bridgeman Images. At once specific and abstract, realistic and dauntingly surreal, Tillmans’ overall oeuvre creates a sense of otherworldliness that nonetheless departs from the everyday, exalting the earth’s primal fruits — a skyscape, a body of water, an arrangement of perishable produce — seen and interpreted by the artist’s surveying eye. His interest in the universe, the cosmos, and other terrestrial things began early – at age 10, specifically, when Tillmans found a book on astronomy nestled in his parents’ bookshelf, initiating an unrelenting fascination for what lay both inside and outside the human body. ‘A lot of people are scared by infinity, [but] it gave me something to hold onto’, he said.3 Freischwimmer 27 beautifully exemplifies Tillmans’ poetic vision of the complexities that make up the world; through the use of light, it forms a unique, cosmic entity comparable to György Kepes’ experimental, photographic landscapes.
Wolfgang Tillmans in Focus
1 Wolfgang Tillmans, in conversation with Dominic Eicher, Frieze, issue 118, October 2008, online.
2 Wolfgang Tillmans, quoted in Jan Verwoert, Wolfgang Tillmans, London, 2002, n.p.3 Wolfgang Tillmans, quoted by Jacqui Palumbo, ‘Wolfgang Tillmans Wants You to Find Spirituality in Photography’, Artsy, 28 February 2020, online.
Provenance
Galería Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2006Exhibited
Santiago de Compostela, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Pequena historia da fotografía, 12 March - 3 May 2009, pp. 104, 128, 150 (illustrated, p. 106, 128, 150, erroneously titled and dated Freischswimmer 11, 2004)
Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Casi el azar: Óscar Domínguez, la decalcomanía y sus derivas, 26 July - 2 December 2018 (erroneously titled Freischswimmer 11)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.
Property from an Important European Collection
Ж39
Freischwimmer 27
signed and numbered 'Wolfgang Tillmans 1/1' on the accompanying artist's label
c-print
240 x 180 cm (94 1/2 x 70 7/8 in.)
Executed in 2003, this work is number 1 from an edition of 1 plus 1 artist's proof.
Estimate
£210,000 - 300,000 ♠
Kate Bryan
Specialist, Head of Evening Sale
+44 20 7318 4026
kbryan@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
London Auction 20 October 2020
1
Emily Mae Smith
Alien Shores
Estimate £40,000 - 60,000 ‡
Sold for £277,200
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2
Salman Toor
Aashiana (Hearth and Home)
Estimate £30,000 - 50,000 ‡
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3
Portia Zvavahera
Arising from the Unknown
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4
Titus Kaphar
Alternate Endings
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5
Hernan Bas
Two Fruits
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6
Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe
Black Stripes on White
Estimate £20,000 - 30,000 ‡
Sold for £94,500
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7
Dana Schutz
Trump Descending an Escalator
Estimate £380,000 - 580,000 ‡
Sold for £688,000
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8
Banksy
Girl with Balloon & Morons Sepia
Estimate £500,000 - 700,000 ‡♠
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9
Nicolas Party
Rocks
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000
Sold for £603,300
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10
Georg Baselitz
Das letzte Selbstbildnis I
Estimate £4,700,000 - 6,000,000 ♠
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11
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Back of the Neck
Estimate £450,000 - 650,000 ‡
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12
Keith Haring
Untitled (Grace Jones Mask)
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13
George Condo
The Age of Reason
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14
Alex Katz
Ada with Mirror
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15
Yoshitomo Nara
Magic Carpet
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16
Ed Ruscha
1981 - Future
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17
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (Pestus)
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18
Andy Warhol
Flowers
Estimate £1,400,000 - 1,800,000 ‡
Sold for £1,595,500
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19
Sir Peter Blake, R.A.
Nudina
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ♠
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20
Allen Jones
Project for Fifteen Foot Women
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000 ♠
Sold for £189,000
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21
Sean Scully
Somebody's Angel
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Sold for £1,014,700
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22
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
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Sold for £441,000
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23
Cy Twombly
Portrait of Alvise di Robilant
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24
Alberto Giacometti
Femme debout
Estimate £550,000 - 750,000 ‡
Sold for £651,700
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25
Wojciech Fangor
M 91
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26
Georges Mathieu
Petite Torture infligée au Marquis de Coconat et à son complice la Môle
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ♠
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27
Hurvin Anderson
Marlene’s
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡♠
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28
This lot is no longer available.
29
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Luminary
Estimate £250,000 - 450,000 ♠
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30
Henry Taylor
Ari and the Deer
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £113,400
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31
Georg Baselitz
Kopf an Kopf II
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡♠
Sold for £705,000
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32
Albert Oehlen
Control
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ‡♠
Sold for £475,000
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33
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate £800,000 - 1,200,000 ‡♠
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34
Albert Oehlen
Die Veränderungen
Estimate £700,000 - 900,000 ♠
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35
Günther Förg
Untitled
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36
Anish Kapoor
Blade
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ‡♠
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37
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38
Jason Rhoades
Heroic Vagina
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000
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39
Wolfgang Tillmans
Freischwimmer 27
Estimate £210,000 - 300,000 ♠
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40
Cory Arcangel
Photoshop CS: 110 by 72 inches, 300 DPI, RGB, square pixels, default gradient 'Spectrum', mousedown y=23900 x=11650, mouseup y=32650 x=11650
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £252,000
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