Wolfgang Tillmans at Buchholz

In addition to new photographs and works from well-known series such as the “Silver” and “Greifbar”, the show marks the debut of Tillmans’s 4K projection “Beleuchter in the Sky” (2020) and includes the audio piece “I want to make a film” (2018).

“Beleuchter in the Sky” is a 22-minute sequence of photographs of the same unchanging set of roofs and the sky above them as seen from Wolfgang Tillmans’s studio in Berlin. The images, accompanied by new music tracks by the artist that impart their rhythm to them, were taken starting in March of this year; reacting to the music, they are spliced together with hard cuts, or in crossfades.

The sound installation “I want to make a film” (9 minutes) is based on a dictaphone recording of the artist speaking about a fictional film project concerning the computing power of smartphones. The question of which technological changes and developments were required to move from the PC and floppy-disk system to the smartphone leads him to a meditation about how the omnipresence of information technologies is perceived, on their dominance and influence over our lives. To create a perfect acoustic situation in the space, the floor has been carpeted and sound panels covered with Green-Tek fabric, a lightweight textile originally developed for shade management in greenhouses, have been installed.

An extensive publication dedicated entirely to Wolfgang Tillmans’s “Silver” works will be released at the end of the exhibition. In addition to comprehensive documentation of the series, the book will contain a new essay by Tom Holert and a conversation between Wolfgang Tillmans and the photography restoration expert Klaus Pollmeier about the specific facture of these works. The book will be published in separate German and English editions.

Wolfgang Tillmans has presented his work in major solo exhibitions at museums since the 1990s. Kunsthalle Zürich (2012) and Les Rencontres d’Arles (2013) presented works from the series “New World.” In 2012, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, showcased a selection of works from the past twenty-five years; the same exhibition was on view at K21, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, in 2013, while a comprehensive retrospective of Tillmans’s oeuvre toured South America. In 2014, installations by Tillmans were displayed at the 8th Berlin Biennale, Manifesta 10, and as part of presentations of art from the collections at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, and the Folkwang Museum, Essen. His video installation “Book for Architects,” which made its public debut at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, subsequently travelled to the Metropolitan Museum, New York. A major solo exhibition opened at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, and in Gothenburg in 2015 on occasion of Tillmans’s receipt of the Hasselblad Award. In early 2016, he presented an extensive survey of his oeuvre at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, followed by major exhibitions at Tate Modern, London, and Fondation Beyeler, Riehen near Basel, in 2017. In 2018, he was awarded the Kaiserring, the art prize of the City of Goslar. Produced in collaboration with the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) in 2018, Tillmans’s travelling exhibition “FRAGILE” has toured venues in numerous African cities including Kinshasa, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Addis Ababa, and Yaoundé, with more cities to follow. Recent exhibitions have included retrospectives at the Carré d’Art-Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes (2018), the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2018), and WIELS, Brussels (2020). A show at the mumok, Vienna, is scheduled for the fall of 2021, followed by a comprehensive retrospective of Wolfgang Tillmans’s oeuvre at the MoMA, New York, in the summer of 2022.