PHOTO: Wolfgang Tillmans-The Point Is Matter

Few artists have shaped the scope of contemporary art and influenced younger generations more than Wolfgang Tillmans. In a career spanning almost four decades, he has consistently redefined the medium of photography through a seamless integration of genres, subjects, techniques, and exhibition strategies. His inventive practice pairs intimacy and playfulness with a commitment to social awareness and a persistent questioning of existing values and hierarchies.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: David Zwirner Gallery Archive

Guided by a profound sense of curiosity and care towards his subjects, Wolfgang Tillmans seeks to expand the poetic possibilities of the medium while addressing the fundamental question of what it means to create pictures in an increasingly image-saturated world. Wolfgang Tillmans presents new and recent work in his solo exhibition “The Point Is Matter”. The exhibition’s title stems from his long-term understanding of his work sitting between the physical reality and presence of the world he works and lives in and the conceptual, sociopolitical, sensual, and spiritual concerns that underpin his practice. Presented across both floors of the gallery, the works on view include depictions of changing forms of atmosphere and elusive natural phenomena; pictures that explore notions of time and temporality; and images that engage with the artist’s expansive conceptions of the still life and the portrait. Tillmans punctuates the exhibition with works made in Addis Ababa, Berlin, Lagos, and Mongolia, along with those taken in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, sensitively invoking resonant associations between the local and the world at large, while advocating for an experience of connectedness that is rooted in the process of looking. In each of the gallery spaces, distinct subject matter emerges. Among them is a room that focuses on images that picture the cycle of water as it transitions from a liquid to a solid (ice) to a gas (water vapor). In “Lunar Landscape” (2022), the Atlantic Ocean glows at great luminosity, the image colliding the celestial plane with the surface of the Earth. “Sirius Through a Defocused Telescope, a–f” (all 2023) show Sirius, the brightest star visible to the human eye, at distinct moments as the star “twinkles.” The works depict air currents and air cells of different densities that result in an ever-changing flicker, blur, and display of spectral colors and shapes. Astronomy represents the artist’s earliest passion, having trained his eye through the observation of the physical universe, the sky, and celestial phenomena. Tillmans further indicates the subtle geological movements and natural states of matter in a world undergoing historic and rapid changes. In “Ulaanbaatar Still Life” (2023), arranged in Mongolia, silk flowers rest on a heating unit in front of a window that overlooks a snowy landscape and a ger, a portable tent that can withstand fierce winter winds, used in the region as a nomadic, adaptable home. “Summer Storm Rain Drops Freeze Frame” (2023) captures rain droplets outside the artist’s studio in Berlin in an otherwise imperceptible moment of transition.  Other works in the show delicately evince a sense of temporality. These pictures evoke the cumulative passage of time in the distinct moments they depict. “Filled with Light, a” (2011) exposes in large scale the luminous shifts that Tillmans observed in his studio, rays of light casting the shadows of window frames onto the bare floor, walls, and ceiling. In “Window Left Open” (2023), another work Tillmans made in his studio, we see a layered interplay between light and shadow, interior and exterior architecture, and domesticized vegetation. In other works on view, Tillmans reflects further on transformative processes. In “Office Paper For Food Wrapping Recycling, Addis Ababa” (2019), discarded business papers are repurposed as packing material. In “Temporary Shoe Shop” (2022), a car hood and windscreen are covered in trainers—the surfaces effectively converted into a retail outlet in Lagos. Tillmans’s expanded approach to still life and the portrait are emphasized throughout the exhibition. In a large still life, citrus fruit and a smoked cigarette in an ashtray are laid atop a copy of the Los Angeles Times from 2001. In “Badehose, photocopy II” (1996), the sculptural qualities of swimming trunks are translated into two-dimensionality, their folds abstracted further by the photocopying process. Though recognizable, the otherwise distorted, crumpled form is suggestive of the way in which figuration and abstraction coexist within Tillmans’s oeuvre, as well as the relationship of photography to surface and three-dimensionality. Tillmans’s portraits are at times long-planned, at other times the result of unexpected interactions or in-the-moment encounters. The portraits shown in this exhibition range from “Anders Stretching On the Carpet” (2022), of his oft-photographed long-term friend, the Danish artist Anders Clausen, to “Zaur Abduraimov” (2023), a Crimean Tatar refugee whom Tillmans shot in Toronto, where Abduraimov works; from Jodie Foster, an actor long admired by the artist, photographed in his kitchen, to the women of “Maraljingoo, Sambuunyam & Norimaa in their ger” (2023), which shows multiple generations of a Mongolian family in their home. Tillmans’s portraits have served as an ongoing investigation: what does it mean to depict a person? Tillmans has visited and returned to Hong Kong and Shenzhen on numerous occasions in his extensive travels and across his body of work. “HKG Airport Interior” (2023) shows a largely dysfunctional informational display wall, with a pixelated screen frozen in a moment of technological rupture. In “HK drive” (2018), an image of an outreached hand on the back of a Hong Kong bus merges with the porticoed stairwell on the street—the public built environment seamlessly flowing into the visual excesses of advertising. Portraits such as those of a young woman, Yixue, seated in a banquet hall, and a scene of packages toppling onto a Shenzhen street connect the presentation to the surrounding metropolis and region. A new video work on view, “Build from Here (Video Room)” (2024), extends Tillmans’s fascination with the interplay between his video and music-making languages and showcases his interest in sound and movement. The video features tracks from the artist’s forthcoming album, “Build From Here”, released on April 26; Tillmans was working on the video right through the installation period, in response to the exhibition. The video consists of footage recorded by Tillmans at different times and locations. In the opening and closing sequences we see Tillmans’s body at moonrise, silhouetted as the full moon illuminates the ocean; he performs gestures with a large stick-like form that exaggerates the body’s improvised movements as he effectively draws in space. Another sequence shows telescopic imagery of the surface of the moon: shot in real time, it reveals the rotation of the earth as the moon gradually moves across the screen. Punctuating the footage is close-up imagery of an industrial offset printer in action: ink rollers covered in paint show the different stages of the analogue printing process.

Photo: Wolfgang Tillmans, Ulaanbaatar Still Life, 2023, © Wolfgang Tillmans, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner Gallery

Info: David Zwirner Gallery, 5–6/F, H Queen’s, 80 Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 25/3-11/5/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.davidzwirner.com/