Since the mid-1980s, Wolfgang Tillmans has reinterpreted representational genres from portraiture to still life to landscape through the medium of photography. The artist's innovative presentational practice engages the dynamics of space; he varies the size of his photographs based on the specific spatial setting of a venue and produces them as large inkjet prints and framed C-prints. Tillmans has developed a highly distinctive style of image making that freely embraces a broad range of subjects—from profound experiences of the everyday to abstractions that result from experiments with the photographic process. His ability to calculatedly create intimate and immediate images combined with his innovative exhibition strategies has changed the way in which photographic images are made, read and received.
Turner Prize-winning artist Wolfgang Tillmans (German, b. 1968) rose to prominence as a documentary-style photographer, focusing his work on London's gay community. Tillmans studied at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design in England from 1990 to 1992. He spent the next several years moving between London and New York with Jochen Klein (German, b. 1997), a painter. Klein's death from AIDS-related complications made a notable impact on Tillmans and his work. The photographer began his career covering gay pride events for magazines such as i-D, Interview, and Spex magazines. Later, his casual, family-photo style shots of important gay figures in the arts world would appear on their covers. In 1997, Tillmans became the coeditor of Spex. The following years were filled with a wide range of projects, including the labor-intensive Concord Grid, on display at the Chisenhale Gallery in London, in 1997. The presentation followed airplane flights at Heathrow Airport from various locations around the city. His 1998 collection Total Solar Eclipse Grid, made up of 21 photographs, similarly documents a solar eclipse. Tillmans won the Turner Prize based on the installation. He was the first photographer, and the first non-American, to receive the award. In 2001, his design was selected as the basis for an AIDS memorial in Munich, Germany. During the 2000s, Tillmans turned toward Abstract Expressionism, using photographs to create sculptures or exploiting mistakes during the photo development process. Starting with a presentation in an issue of Parkett in 1998, in which the artist displayed years' worth of damaged negatives, this thread continues to run through his work even today, most recently in works such as his film project Kopierer in 2010, a ten-minute film showing a laser copier printing documents.
Selected Public Collections:
Art Institute of Chicago, IL
British Council Collection, London, England
Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
