Presenting recent developments in Wolfgang Tillmans's portraiture and
still lifes, Wolfgang Tillmans: DZHK Book 2018 features a broad
selection of new and recent works that respond to their surroundings
while at the same time embodying a self-contained environment.
Few artists have shaped the scope of contemporary art and influenced a
younger generation more than Wolfgang Tillmans. Since the early 1990s,
his works have epitomized a new kind of subjectivity in photography,
pairing intimacy and playfulness with social critique and the persistent
questioning of existing values and hierarchies. Through his seamless
integration of genres, subjects, techniques, and exhibition strategies,
he has expanded conventional ways of approaching the medium, and his
practice continues to address the fundamental question of what it means
to create pictures in an increasingly image-saturated world.
Published on the occasion of Tillmans's exhibition at David Zwirner in
Hong Kong in 2018, this fully bilingual catalogue juxtaposes pictures of
intimacy and friendship with views and angles of the world at large. An
aerial view of the Sahara desert displays almost infinite detail while
being monochromatic and near-abstract in appearance. In line with
Tillmans's interest in exhibitions as amplifiers of a particular,
underlying perspective, each of the works engages in an intricate system
of relationships between its aesthetic elements, subject, and
institutional setting. Seen together, they implicate the viewer as an
active part of the dialogue. The 2016 interview with author Allie Biswas
of The Brooklyn Rail has been edited and expanded by the artist for
this catalogue.
