On the occasion of his 2025 exhibition "Weltraum" (Space) at the Albertinum in Dresden, Tillmans created this unique artist's book that places his four decades of artistic practice in a thought provoking dialogue with the past and present of East and West Germany. "Things matter, Dinge zählen" intertwines excerpts from a 1987 Dresden inventory catalogue with Tillmans' 2003 catalogue "If one thing matters, everything matters" for Tate Britain, in which he devised a speculative catalogue raisonné of his early work. The resurgence of these two out-of-print titles is combined with a conversation in which Tillmans reflects on his artistic beginnings and analyses their aesthetic and social implications today.

Weltraum marked Tillmans’ first major museum show in Germany in over half a decade. Following extensive retrospectives in the US and Canada, the exhibition focused on entirely new works created since 2022. The starting point for Tillmans’ latest photographic series is, in part, a journey that began in San Francisco, the hub of digital technologies on the US West Coast, and continued through Guam to Southeast Asia. In regions such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mongolia, Tillmans continued his investigation into the material traces of internet corporations and AI companies, observing how these industries intertwine disparate locales into a dense global network.

Few artists have shaped the scope of contemporary art and influenced younger generations more than Wolfgang Tillmans. With boundless curiosity, which seamlessly spans geographies and disciplines, he explores the contemporary visual culture, repeatedly tackling the challenge of translating complex realities into visual forms, offering accessible perspectives that encourage fearless, open coexistence.
Wolfgang Tillmans redefined the medium of photography by integrating genres, subjects, techniques, and exhibition strategies. He seeks to expand the poetic possibilities of the medium while addressing the fundamental question of what it means to create pictures in an increasingly image-saturated world.