Galerie Buchholz, Cologne
Wolfgang Tillmans, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 2 March - 8 September 2013, another
Wolfgang Tillmans, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, 27 May - 1 October 2017, another
Wolfgang Tillmans: Fragile, Modern Art Museum-Gebre Kristos Desta Center Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 14 February - 31 March 2019; Contemporary Art Gallery, Yaoundé, 29 November 2019 - 10 January 2020; Museum of Science and Technology, Accra, 8 October - 14 November 2021, another
Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear, MoMA, New York, 12 September 2022 - 1 January 2023, another
B. Glasner & P. Schmidt, eds., Chroma: Design, Architecture & Art in Color, Basel: Birkhäuser, 2010, p. 79
Wolfgang Tillmans, Abstract Pictures, Ostfildern: Hatje Kantz, 2011, p. 166
Wolfgang Tillmans, To look without fear, New York: MoMA, 2022, p. 62
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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