‘I’m also not afraid of repetition, I always say I want to make NEW pictures, but that doesn’t mean I can’t look at subject matter that was looked at by generations of artists before (or biologists, or calendar producers —a tree through the seasons). It’s the HOW that matters. Words can describe the WHAT, the subject matter, the HOW is much harder to describe, and that’s where visual art negates language.’
Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans’ long-term apple tree series developed organically. In the spring of 2001, he planted an apple tree in a container outside his London flat and began to photograph it. He recalls the story:
I moved to an ex-council flat which had one of these balconies where you access the flat from an outdoor walkway and I began to collect more plants. And then I bought an apple tree. In the first year I had the tree, children were stealing all the apples, so on the last one I put a post-it note saying ‘Please leave this one.’ I began to photograph it – not really as a project, but it was just an intuitive reaction because every day I walked past this developing growth and these ripening apples. That is typical for how I work, that things often only afterwards turn out to be serious.
In 2002, Tillmans took two photographs, day and night, which were released to help fund the accompanying catalogue to his 2003 Tate Britain exhibition if one thing matters, everything matters. inner city apple tree, a photograph of the blossoming tree, was created in spring of 2003. Realising that he needed to plant at least two different apple tree varieties to make apples, he added two more trees, and in the following year, 2004, he photographed the seasonal trajectory of an apple tree from blossom to ripe apples, resulting in apple tree (a-j), which includes the present image. apple tree (k), created in 2006, was followed by apple tree (2007) and the series concluded in 2010 with the final work inner city apple tree II.
In 2006, apple tree (f) was shown alongside the 13 other apple tree photographs as 24x20-inch exhibition prints for his first US survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Since then these works have been exhibited both individually and as a series, most recently at Fondation Beyeler in 2017.
apple tree (f) presents the tree at its peak with ready-to-pick apples in red and golden shades. Created as an oversized stand-alone work, this lot epitomises the way in which Tillmans sees the world. ‘In the most innocent sight, a tree growing, I can find great joy,’ states the artist. ‘And I sometimes find that this is a tremendously subversive and free act, that you are empowered with your eyes to access the world the way you want to see it.’