Page 171 - The 60.Venice Biennial & MoMA issue of WOA Contemporary Art magazine

In the 2017 video Untitled (leg), a single bare leg rotates The following gallery will delve into Tillmans’s subversion
rhythmically, evoking 19th-century pre-cinematic motion of traditional art-historical subjects and genres. His
studies within a 21st-century smartphone screen format. series titled Faltenwurf (German for “drapery”) features
photographs of clothes hanging on radiators, crumpled into
balls, or lying in heaps - an allusion to drawn and painted
fabric studies. Starting in the late 1990s, Tillmans explored
darkroom abstraction, experimenting with techniques like
applying colored tints and manipulating negatives with
flashlights during development. His monumental work I
Don’t Want to Get Over You (2000), inspired by lyrics from a
song by The Magnetic Fields, merges gestural green streaks
and dark, thread-like lines with an image of a vast, barren,
otherworldly landscape.

Tillmans’s video work, often overlooked, seamlessly blends
movement, electronic music, ambient sound, technology,
and everyday imagery. The fourth gallery will showcase two
video pieces. Lights (Body) (2000–02) captures the flashing
lights in a bustling nightclub, revealing specks of dust
rising from ravers’ clothes and skin. Accompanied by Air’s
hypnotic dance beat, this work immerses viewers in the
club experience. Peas (2003), a three-minute study of boiling
peas in close-up, shot in Tillmans’s former East London
studio, syncs the vegetables’ rhythm with audible sounds
from a nearby Pentecostal church.

Icestorm (2001). Image courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner, New York / Hong
Kong, Galerie Buchholz, Berlin / Cologne, Maureen Paley, London.
Lighter, white convex I (2009). Chromogenic print in acrylic hood. 25 1/4 x 21 1/16 x
2 3/8" (64.2 x 54.2 x 6 cm). Image courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner, New York /
Hong Kong, Galerie Buchholz, Berlin / Cologne, Maureen Paley, London

In the exhibition’s first gallery, Tillmans’s early photocopies
will share space with images that catapulted him to
prominence as a chronicler of youth subculture and nightlife.
Notable works include Lutz & Alex Sitting in the Tree
(1992) and Chemistry Squares (1992), both published in the
British alternative magazine i-D during the early 1990s. The
persistent presence of magazines in Tillmans’s exhibitions
underscores his ability to amplify ideas when his pictures
traverse various media platforms.
The second gallery will feature early photographs that
emphasize Tillmans’s enduring fascination with music and
performance. His 1995 portrait of legendary DJ Joanne Joseph
(better known as Smokin’ Jo), created for Interview magazine,
will be juxtaposed with Wall of Speakers (1992). The latter was
captured during Tillmans’s trip to Kingston, Jamaica, where
he documented the local ragga music scene. This photograph
portrays an outdoor festival’s precariously stacked sound
system - a sculptural object and a means of experimentation
capable of producing thunderous bass sounds.

WORLD of ART 171