Representative work by Wolfgang Tillmans
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Artist

Wolfgang Tillmans

b. 1968, Remscheid, West Germany · German · Based in Berlin, Germany & London, United Kingdom

  • Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design, UK (1990–1992)
  • Fine Art Photography
  • C-Prints
  • Darkroom Abstraction
  • Installation

Wolfgang Tillmans came of age in the club culture and magazine world of early-1990s London and Cologne, using photography with the same casual attention he gave to friendship, music, and politics. His work spans intimate portraits, still lifes, abstractions made without a camera, and large-scale prints pinned directly to gallery walls. In 2000 he became the first photographer and first non-British artist to win the Turner Prize.

Tillmans treats the exhibition as a form of writing. He works across scales — snapshot prints beside museum-size inkjets — and refuses hierarchies between subject matter, letting a portrait, a windowsill, and an astronomical image share the same wall.

Gallery Representation

Objects

Wolfgang Tillmans, Bernhard Squat, 2001 — a figure crouched by a window in a Berlin apartment.

David Zwirner

Wolfgang Tillmans

Bernhard Squat

2001

Tillmans photographs the moments most people mistake for nothing. Bernhard Squat holds a friend mid-gesture in the artist's Berlin apartment — a private, almost throwaway pose lit by the ordinary light of a window. That refusal to separate the important from the incidental is the whole argument of his practice: attention, uncalibrated, applied evenly. The print is offered through the artist's long-standing gallery, David Zwirner, which represents his work internationally and stewards the editions from his studio.

Official source: David Zwirner.

View work at David Zwirner ↗

Artist Films

Major Works

  • 1992Lutz & Alex sitting in the trees
  • 1993Suzanne & Lutz, white dress, army skirt
  • 1997Concorde
  • 2002The Cock (kiss)
  • 2003Freischwimmer 26
  • 2005 onwardtruth study center
  • 2006paper drop (Star)
  • 2009–12Neue Welt
  • 2012astro crusto, a
  • 2014Sendeschluss / End of Broadcast

Museums & Public Collections

Influences

  • Diane Arbus
  • On Kawara
  • techno and rave culture
  • Roland Barthes
  • Peter Hujar

Related Artists

Selected Exhibitions

  • 2022To look without fearMoMA, New Yorksolo
  • 2017Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017Tate Modern, Londonsolo
  • 2012Neue WeltKunsthalle Zürich, Zurichsolo
  • 2000Turner PrizeTate Britain, Londongroup

Publications

  • 2021Wolfgang Tillmans: A ReaderMoMAcatalogue
  • 2017Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017Tate Publishingcatalogue
  • 2011Abstract PicturesHatje Cantzmonograph

Interviews & Writing