Page 172 - The 60.Venice Biennial & MoMA issue of WOA Contemporary Art magazine

WORLD-CLASS ART A fifth gallery is dedicated to Soldiers: The Nineties (1999), an
installation featuring enlarged newspaper photographs. These
images explore the geopolitical implications of visual culture
during a period when Cold War tensions eased. Newspapers
frequently depicted soldiers engaged in leisure activities -
smoking, sitting casually, or playing chess - while deployed to
conflict-ridden nations for UN peacekeeping missions. Tillmans
was intrigued by the erotic undertones of these anonymous,
occasionally bare-chested servicemen, informed by his
previous exploration of how queer and techno subcultures
adopted camouflage and utility wear.

Gallery six delves into Tillmans’s work at the intersection of
abstraction and representation, emphasizing his interest in
photographic paper’s materiality. His series Paper Drops,
initiated after acquiring an industrial-sized printer in 2001,
Silver 152, chromogenic print, 21 5/16 × 25 1/4" (54.2 × 64.2 cm) (2013).
experiments with gravity’s optical effects on freely bending and Image courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner, New York / Hong Kong, Galerie
curling paper. “For me, the photo has always been an object,” Buchholz, Berlin / Cologne, Maureen Paley, London
Tillmans asserts. The ongoing Lighter works, created without
clippings, and printouts of newspaper and magazine articles.
a camera, further expand on this dynamic, manipulating color
Tillmans introduced this tactic to question notions of
fields within photographic paper.
absolutism, whether related to the Bush Administration’s claims
of weapons of mass destruction justifying the war in Iraq or
The center space of the exhibition will feature an iteration of
religious dogma in any form. Simultaneously, he acknowledges
Tillmans’s Truth Study Center - a structure he first presented
the universal human desire to seek truth. Half of the tables in
in 2005. In this design, unpretentious wooden tabletops serve
this room contain material from early 2000s installations, while
as the display architecture for a mix of his own photographs,
the other half has been specifically composed for the MoMA
Blue self–portrait shadow (2020). Image courtesy of the artist, David exhibition using recent material.
Zwirner, New York / Hong Kong, Galerie Buchholz, Berlin / Cologne,
Maureen Paley, London
Between 2008 and 2012, Tillmans embarked on a major new
project that coincided with his adoption of the digital camera.
This project, titled Neue Welt (“New World”), comprises
portraiture, still life, landscape, street photography, and
architectural studies. Alongside these works, gallery seven will
feature documents related to social movements, emphasizing
the ethics of care at the heart of Tillmans’s practice. Notable
among these is a 2014 photograph capturing dancing figures
at one of St. Petersburg’s few gay clubs - the Blue Oyster Bar.
This image was taken a year after Vladimir Putin signed a bill
outlawing the dissemination of “propaganda for non-traditional
sexual relations.” Another significant work is Black Lives Matter
Protest, Union Square, b (2014), depicting an outstretched
hand during a Black Lives Matter protest following widely
publicized police killings of African Americans. A highlight of
the exhibition will be the first US museum presentation of an
audiovisual listening room for Tillmans’s first full-length album,
Moon in Earthlight (2021). This album exemplifies his unique
style of “audio photography.” As a musician and documentarian
of music, Tillmans has long engaged with music’s cultural
significance and the shared experience of listening. The album,
produced primarily during the pandemic, incorporates spoken

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