Wolfgang Tillmans is known to the general public as a photographer whose work reflects a contemporary way of life which revolves around music and youth culture, but also encompasses a sense of social and political commitment. The dividing lines between ‘queer’ and ‘straight’ or between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture seem to him entirely irrelevant. His early pictures of friends, clubbers, activists and artists are regarded as challenging, raw, romantic and erotic.
In the last decade it has become clear that Tillman's perception of the world has been steadily widening. His distinctive style of image-making encompasses a broad range of subjects and now shifts between his immediate surroundings, nature, politics, religion, global issues like the AIDS crisis and even the purely abstract qualities of the image. In his installations he employs a free mix of images from widely divergent visual categories.
Tillmans’ aim is, as it were, to construct a visual catalogue in which every image can stand alone but also be part of a continuous whole. Each of his exhibitions uses new combinations of these images. Recently, he has started experimenting in an unorthodox way with his own material. Emphasizing both their pictorial and material qualities, he reprints his images, changes their scale and colour range and even brings them into a three-dimensional realm.
Photography and installation go hand in hand in Tillmans’ work. For him, they are inseparable means of expression. Especially over the last few years, the relationship between his work and a specific spatial situation has become a key preoccupation. The abstract qualities of his work have also become ever more prominent since he started to unleash processes of abstraction by passing photographic images repeatedly through the photocopier, scanning them in high resolution and then enlarging the results to produce large C-prints. More recently still, he has started producing entirely abstract and often largely accidental compositions, created in the darkroom through the direct manipulation of light on paper.
In the forthcoming exhibition at the Stedelijk, Tillmans reveals the connections between his own work and that of a number of kindred spirits in the art world.
New acquisition: Stedelijk Room
A particularly interesting element in the exhibition is an installation created by Tillmans especially for the Stedelijk and now acquired by the museum for its collection. Called Stedelijk Room, it combines abstract images with portraits, landscapes, still lifes and townscapes.