The catalog of a curatorial project devoted to Wolfgang Tillmans' books and magazines: an inventory as an invitation to literally take a different look at Tillmans' work, in print.
If proof were needed, the collection presented here is sufficient to demonstrate the importance of printed matter in thework of Wolfgang Tillmans.
To understand this, it is worth mentioning the installations of his exhibitions, which form an integral part of the work and reveal that Tillmans is an incredible scenographer. The images are never placed together by chance. They resonate with one another as if they were a constellation. Scale plays an important role—the relationship between the infinitely large and the infinitely small—as does the space between the images.
This idea of a constellation, with the visitor as the axis around which the images revolve, is also manifested in this collection of books: through their number and, de facto, through the profusion of images they contain.
They form a kind of universal library in the manner of a Tower of Babel, where all disciplines meet and collide, constituting a fragment of humanity in all its facets (scientific, political, poetic, erotic, etc.), echoing Steichen's The Family of Man.
A universal aggregate, in perpetual motion, with the book as the tool for the circulation and dissemination of knowledge.
These lines would be incomplete without mentioning the means of presentation.
By displaying books for free consultation, the choice of accuracy has been made, as books imply handling.
It also breaks down the invisible, even symbolic, barrier that sometimes keeps the viewer at a distance from the work, because some of these works, described as artist's books, are indeed works of art in our hands. They force us to question their form and the relationship we have with them.
It would also be appropriate to address the question of the reproduction of the work, the status of the image once it has been reproduced, printed, recycled, and distributed; to talk about this committed artist's political vision, as can be seen through his struggles in favor of Europe and minorities. We should evoke the democratic, even utopian dimension that prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s, making the work accessible, as mentioned above, by facilitating the circulation of images. To question the aura of the work in the age of its ability to be "technically reproduced" by engaging, even before the book, the space provided by magazines (I-D, Spex, Arena Homme +, etc.).
A modest inventory becomes an invitation to literally take a different look at Wolfgang Tillmans' work, this time in print.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at the Skwat Kameari Art Centre, Tokyo, from December 10, 2025, to February 1st, 2026.