Wolfgang Tillmans is one of the most important German artists and won the Turner Prize in 2000. Now New York’s MoMA is honoring the photographer with a major exhibition – full of “images that describe how it feels to live today”.
Above the fire extinguisher, next to the emergency exit, an oversized weed, a postcard-sized rainbow: At first glance, the installation of Wolfgang Tillmans’ works in New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) may seem random, but behind it lies years of work and a very own minute order. On Monday (September 12) “Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear” opens, Tillmans’ first museum show in New York and one of the largest exhibitions by a German artist in recent years in the metropolis.
“After seven years of preparation, the whole thing took 16 days and nights here on site, during which every square meter of wall area really needed attention,” says Tillmans. 16 days and nights that Tillmans spent almost continuously with just a few assistants on the sixth floor of MoMA, which the world-famous museum in the middle of Manhattan made completely available to him, in order to put each of the around 350 exhibits in their place.
“On the one hand, of course, it’s very exhausting, but on the other hand, it was really great to be able to be here alone at night,” says the photographer, who was born in Remscheid in 1968. “It’s like a performance without an audience – and you can hopefully feel the attention that each piece received afterwards.” From the very beginning of his career, Tillmans had “revolutionized the prevailing conventions of photographic presentation,” according to MoMA.
Despite all the convention revolution, the works are hung chronologically: from the beginnings, when Tillmans portrayed nightlife in Berlin and London, among other things, to photographs of celebrities such as model Kate Moss and his preoccupation with depicting wars, to his fascination with astronomy and Minerals and his abstract and sometimes almost sculptural works with photographic paper.
“What moved me is making pictures that describe how it feels to live today,” says Tillmans, who is one of the most important German artists and has already received the Turner Prize, the Federal Cross of Merit and the Goslar Kaiserring has been awarded. “And I realized in the late 80s that I didn’t need to paint these pictures.”
Music is also playing at MoMA: Tillman’s first album “Moon in Earthlight”, released in 2021. «Music was my first passion along with astronomy and it has remained so throughout my life.» With the exhibition, he wants to encourage visitors to “use their eyes freely,” says Tillmans. «To change the perspective, to look at things from different scales.» The largest picture doesn’t always have to be the most important one, the visitor should assign “value and importance” themselves.
Technology and paper have always fascinated Tillmans, but at the same time some of his shots had a kind of smartphone aesthetic even before it was developed. He also uses a smartphone from time to time, says the photographer. “There are also one or two mobile phone photos in the exhibition. For me there is no bad camera. You just have to know what they can do for you. But of course I couldn’t have imagined 35 years ago that this medium would be at the center of everyday life. And I’m pleased that this work, which is here at the end, survived everything like this.”
The exhibition at MoMA is a great honor for him, says Tillmans, who lived in New York for a while in the 1990s. “It’s something you might hope for as an artist, but you can never expect or demand it. In that respect, I’m modestly grateful.”
The show will be on view in New York until January 1, 2023, followed by Toronto and San Francisco. Tillmans wants to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in October, where he sits on the board – and then take a one-year sabbatical. “I last did that in 2014 and that shouldn’t be seen as a blank space in your CV. I will certainly do some things too, but I just want to feel like I’m researching without direction.”