Wolfgang Tillmans
PROJECT
Wolfgang Tillmans’ photographic practice ranges from individual images to large, multi-scale installations. His subjects include portraits of friends and lovers, darkroom abstractions, and tabletop arrangements of prints and magazines. Since the 1990s, his work has addressed themes of sexuality, freedom, human rights and belonging. Created for the NGV Triennial, Love Life Installation (1989–) combines texture, light and photographs of the body with abstract works displayed to evoke a sense of movement. Tillmans describes the installation as capturing life, dance, love, skin and the physical and optical aspects of photography.
The acquisition of this artist’s work is supported by Bowness Family Foundation
ABOUT
Few artists have had as great an impact on contemporary art and the next generation as Wolfgang Tillmans. For almost forty years, he has reshaped photographic practice by working across diverse genres, subjects, techniques and modes of exhibition-making. He was the first photographer and the first non-British artist to win the Turner Prize in 2000 and was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people in 2023. In recent years, he has held solo exhibitions including the touring exhibitions Fragile, shown in eight countries in Africa between 2018 and 2022, and To Look Without Fear at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (US), followed by stops at Art Gallery Ontario (Canada), and SFMOMA, San Francisco (US). His most recent exhibition was Rien ne nous y préparait – Tout nous y préparait / Nothing Could Have Prepared Us, Everything Could Have Prepared Us at the Bibliothèque publique d’information, Centre Pompidou, Paris (France). His work is represented in major institutional collections worldwide.