Canadian Art International: Wolfgang Tillmans
Tate Britain, London, England
Just three years ago, Wolfgang Tillmans seemed to be in every high-profile group show that was on in London. He had a room in the Royal Academy's execrable "Apocalypse," and was included in the Whitechapel's "Protest & Survive." At the same time, he was making his Tate debut as a Turner Prize finalist. His winning that year's prize made it look as if some sort of full-blown hype was being executed in the London art world, with Tillmans as the exhibition equivalent of successful product placement.
"if one thing matters, everything matters" sees him returning to the scene of his Turner triumph with a big retrospective. One notable aspect of any display of Tillmans' work is its installation. In contrast with the precise ranks of carefully framed prints conventionally laid across gallery walls at viewing level, Tillmans creates arrangements using different-sized images, from postcards to giant ink-jet prints, which are placed all over the walls at different levels. Often, photographs are displayed alongside magazine reproductions. This juxtaposition of scale and format forces the viewer to interact with the work in an unexpectedly physical way; we must constantly shift position to take in the sheer range of images presented. Some are framed, but the majority are casually taped to the walls, although their precise arrangements reveal the care that has been taken.
Tillmans' work is as problematic to art photography as Tracey Emin's celebrated My Bed has been to fine art. He delights in photographing the curve of a piece of paper, or the incidental drapes of a discarded garment. He manages to take the mundane and reframe it in a way that not only heightens viewers' awareness of the casual, unnoticed beauty around them, but also proves him to be an artist who is seriously observing his world. Compare Summer still life (1995)—one of many still life studies in the show—with Nan Goldin's similar Breakfast in bed, Torre di Bellosguardo, Florence (1996). Goldin's simple meal, theatrically placed before drapes, looks sumptuously Caravaggioesque compared to Tillmans' Matisse-like bowl of fruit on a window ledge, which share the picture surface with domestic detritus like old newspapers and a cigarette lighter. Where both photographers strive for spontaneity in their work, Tillmans' study is the one that appears most authentic—and, ironically, it is perhaps the most composed. His experiments in the developing room are displayed throughout the show—synthesized colour fields and eerie pink scratches that look like distorted close-ups of human flesh. While it would be easy to dismiss his work as anti-aesthetic in its determination to appear amateurishly uncomposed, the pictures reveal eloquent clues about composition and attention to detail.
Images of his celebrity friends, like Kate Moss and others from the worlds of music and fashion, make Tillmans a contender for hip social chronicler in London's continuing love affair with itself. His portraits add little to their famous subjects, but their context—amongst the artist's friends, lovers, experiments and domestic minutiae—pulls them into an apparently real and unpretentious orbit that reclaims their humanity. If the famous matter, so does everyone else. Well done, Wolfgang!
Winter 2003
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