Wolfgang Tillmans
The only photographer to win the Turner Prize (in 2000) has taken over the Serpentine Gallery in London until the 19th of September.
It’s a curious thing, seeing Tillman’s work. I saw his winning entry for the Turner and wasn’t sure what to make of him then and after visiting this exhibition my view hasn’t really changed.
There are, of course, some intriguingly wonderful pictures. One, that we thought was a pair of hands in a bowl turned out to be no such thing. The images of Venus’s transit might not amount to much on photographic paper, but are curiously moving and engaging.
The works also play with scale, some photo’s are small and could have been taken by anyone and developed at any high street developers, others are metres high demanding your attention immediately.
What interests me though is that Tillmans seems to be playing with photography itself, he’s being self-referential, taking a photo of a photocopier-an image of an image maker. Here, he is questioning what photography is. I like that, I like things that make us ask questions. He is also asking us to look at the way we look at things, to go beyond the proverbial surface. He plays with photographic paper, creasing the sheets, turning them into a kind of minimalist sculpture or abstract piece of art work, some of which are beguiling and some of which fail to move me at all. One thing though, in a photography exhibition, here we have a series of works that require no photograph.
I want to say that I loved this exhibition, and as interesting as some parts of it undoubtedly are, it wasn’t until I got outside and saw the temporary cafe by Jean Nouvel that I actually uttered the word, “Wow!"Looking that the photographs is like looking at medical supplies, something quite mundane that can become interesting when you study it. But in the end, it is art that the viewer is respoinsible for making art, and less the artist. A trip to the Serpentine is always an interesting experience, but I’d go along for this alone and leave Tillmans to his own devices.
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