Wolfgang Tillmans

°1968, Remscheid (DE) – lives and works in Berlin (DE) and London (UK)

Over the past 30 years, Wolfgang Tillmans has redefined photography and the way it is presented. Known in the early 1990s for his seemingly casual images of the world he inhabited, his work reassessed photographic conventions and reflected the culture and identity politics of the time, capturing the fragility of human life and focusing on everyday objects. His work has always engaged with portraiture, landscape and still life, but more recently Tillmans has turned to a deeper exploration of abstraction, and has pushed the boundaries and definitions of the photographic form.

Tillmans continually challenges photographic practice by playing with exhibition methods, often pinning or taping his work to gallery walls, building study tables that resemble museological vitrines, or creating wall-based cases for selected works. Each exhibition is a renegotiation and rearrangement of material, ideas and subjects. For each installation, he investigates the process of exhibition and image-making, intuitively reflecting the politics of our shared contemporary society. Tillmans’ images capture the essence of a moment, and the pictures and installations that the artist has created over the last three decades are an alchemical blend of detachment and engagement.

(courtesy of Serpentine Gallery)

Wolfgang Tillmans – Paper drop (Reversed) II, 2011

Wolfgang Tillmans – Garten, 2008

Wolfgang Tillmans – DAN, 2008

Wolfgang Tillmans – Freischwimmer 231, 2012

Wolfgang Tillmans – Lutz, Alex, Suzanne & Christoph on beach (b_w), 1993

Wolfgang Tillmans – Freischwimmer 54, 1994

Wolfgang Tillmans – Italian costal guard flying rescue mission off Lampedusa, 2008

Wolfgang Tillmans – Chloe, 1995

Wolfgang Tillmans – Pear Cut, 2019

Wolfgang Tillmans shows his work internationally, including solo exhibitions at Philadelphia Museum of Art; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Kunsthalle Zürich; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Carré d’Art, Nîmes, IMMA, Dublin; Fondation Beyeler, Basel; and Tate Modern, London.

Work by Wolfgang Tillmans is held in museum collections worldwide, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Tate, London.

Wolfgang Tillmans is represented by the following galleries;
click through to discover more of his work.

Maureen Paley, London

Galerie Buchholz, Cologne

Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris

Regen Projects, Los Angeles

David Zwirner, New York / London / Paris / Hong Kong

You can also see plenty more of Wolfgang Tillmans work on his own website.