Page 170 - The 60.Venice Biennial & MoMA issue of WOA Contemporary Art magazine

WORLD-CLASS ART

WOLFGANG TILLMANS:
TO LOOK WITHOUT FEAR

MoMA PRESENTS WOLFGANG TILLMANS: TO LOOK WITHOUT
FEAR, THE ARTIST’S FIRST COMPREHENSIVE MUSEUM SURVEY
IN NEW YORK.
The Multifaceted Exhibition Will Display Unique Groupings
of Approximately 350 Photographs, Videos, and Multimedia
Wake (2001). Image courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner, New York / Hong Kong,
Installations, Including Recent and Never-Before-Seen Works. Galerie Buchholz, Berlin / Cologne, Maureen Paley, London.
Curator: Roxana Marcoci, MoMA’s David Dechman Senior
Curator of Photography.
exhibition space, inviting viewers to engage with the poetic
possibilities and urgent social and political causes that have
defined his artistic journey.

THEMES OF HUMANITY AND CONNECTION
“Social themes form a rich vein throughout his practice,” notes
Roxana Marcoci. Tillmans’s work is motivated by questions of
perception and communication. His art emphasizes human
connections, reflecting a deep empathy for his subjects. Over
the years, he has captured survival and loss during the AIDS
crisis, deconstructed media’s portrayal of military forces,
amplified LGBTQ+ voices globally, and traced the impact of
globalism.

Installation view of Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear, on view at The
Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Emile Askey VISUAL DEMOCRACY IN ACTION
Tillmans: To Look Without Fear will showcase various bodies
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) present Wolfgang Tillmans:
of work, revealing the artist’s distinct display strategies.
To Look Without Fear, the artist’s first museum survey in New
Unframed prints are taped directly to walls or hung with
York. The exhibition will run from September 12, 2022, through
clips, while framed photographs coexist with magazine
January 1, 2023, at the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Center for
pages. Constellations of color and black-and-white images,
Special Exhibitions. Featuring approximately 350 of Tillmans’s
alongside photocopies, will populate walls and tabletops. Video
photographs, videos, and multimedia installations, the show
projections and sonic installations exemplify Tillmans’s vision of
will unfold across the entire sixth floor of the museum. Curated
visual democracy - an inclusive space where diverse forms of
by Roxana Marcoci, The David Dechman Senior Curator of
expression converge.
Photography, and assisted by Caitlin Ryan and Phil Taylor, the
exhibition celebrates Tillmans’s inventive, philosophical, and
TECHNOLOGY AND AMBITION
socially engaged approach to art.
The exhibition’s entrance features works that exemplify
Tillmans’s engagement with technology. His childhood
TILLMANS’S VISION: BREAKING BOUNDARIES
passion for astronomy led him to experiment with
Wolfgang Tillmans (b. 1968, Germany) has fearlessly explored
telescopes, photocopiers, and video cameras. Victoria
diverse genres of photography, continually pushing the
Park (2007), depicting friends lounging in an East London
boundaries of visual storytelling. From the outset of his
park, reflects his long-standing fascination with laser
career, he challenged conventional norms of photographic
photocopiers. Enlarging images up to 400 percent, Tillmans
presentation, weaving connections between images in
pushed the limits of photographic materials and techniques
response to specific contexts. His exhibitions activate the
- an ambition paralleling his experiments in electronic music.

170 WORLD of ART