Wolfgang Tillmans - Photographs London Wednesday, May 25, 2022 | Phillips

Photographs

London Auction 25 May 2022

  • Provenance

    Maureen Paley, London, 2016

  • Catalogue Essay

    Silver 120 reflects Wolfgang Tillmans’ exploration of abstract and cameraless photography. Starting in 1992, the Silver series compiles experimental work that celebrates ‘the process’. In the series, silver nitrate-coated paper is exposed to a wide range of processes such as light, salts and chemicals, resulting in unpredictable marks, colours and shapes. Traces left on the paper shift the attention away from a photographic rendering to a deep sense of materiality.

  • 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.

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20

Wolfgang Tillmans

Silver 120

2013
Unique chromogenic print.
30.4 x 40.6 cm (11 7/8 x 15 7/8 in.)
Titled, dated, annotated and signed 'Silver 120 2013 unique Wolfgang Tillmans' in pencil on the verso.

Estimate
£10,000 - 15,000 ‡♠

Sold for £12,600

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Photographs

London Auction 25 May 2022