Private Collection, Germany
Lempertz, Cologne, 2 June 2018, lot 874
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
London, Tate Britain, Wolfgang Tillmans: If One Thing Matters, Everything Matters, 6 June - 4 September 2003 (another variant exhibited)
Basel, Fondation Beyeler, Wolfgang Tillmans, 28 May - 1 October 2017, p.116 (another variant exhibited and illustrated)
Martin Herbert, 'Wolfgang Tillmans Tate Britain', ArtForum, vol.42, no. 2, October 2003 (another variant illustrated)
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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