Wolfgang Tillmans

Infobox Artist
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name = Wolfgang Tillmans

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birthdate = Birth date and age|1968|8|15|df=y
location = Remscheid, Germany
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nationality = German
field = Photography
training = Bournemouth and Poole College of Art
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awards = Turner Prize (2000)

Wolfgang Tillmans (born 16 August 1968) is a German photographer, whose lives in Berlin and London. He won the Turner Prize in 2000.

Life and work

Wolfgang Tillmans was born in Remscheid in Germany. He lived and worked in Hamburg at the end of the 1980s before moving to England. He studied at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art from 1990 to 1992. Since 1996 he has lived and worked in London. About his strong ties to both countries Tillmann said in a 2007 interview with Robert Ayers from ARTINFO:

"I fell in love with England and with London when I was there on a language trip when I was 14. That coincided with me discovering Culture Club and the New Romantics and the whole of street culture. And the language and everything else speaks to me. But I don't think I'll ever lose my German-ness. You never lose the culture that you're from. England worked very well as an antidote to my German-ness. It's a good combination for me." [citation | title= THE AI INTERVIEW Wolfgang Tillmans | author= Robert Ayers | publisher=ARTINFO | year=2007 | date= July 5, 2007 | url= http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/25314/wolfgang-tillmans/ | accessdate=2008-04-23 ]

Tillmans has published work in magazines such as "i-D" and "Vogue", but he is mostly known for his use of multiple photographic genres (and the mixing of those genres) and his unique gallery presentation.

Since the mid-1980s, Wolfgang Tillmans has reinterpreted representational genres from portraiture to still life to landscape through the medium of photography. He invented a presentational practice that engages the dynamics of space, varying the size of his photographs based on the specific spatial setting of a venue and producing them as large inkjet prints and large framed C-prints. First recognized in the early 1990s for photographs of friends, street fashion and gay subculture, he has developed a highly distinctive style of image making that freely embraces a broad range of subjects—from experiences of the everyday, the homoerotic snapshot, to abstractions that result from experiments with the photographic process.

His innovative exhibition strategies are unique and distinctive, and have changed the way in which photographic images are read and received in art galleries. An aspect of his artistic practice is to assume a curatorial role—he creates configurations with his photographs that draw formal, symbolic and ephemeral connections. His installations encourage active audience engagement and ask viewers to consider their own experiences within Tillmans’s visual world.

One of Tillmans's other chief modes of presentation is through the book form, and his numerous collections (see bibliography below) offer both extended studies of specific artistic interests such as in the book "Concorde," while other books function in a way similar to his gallery installations and include images from several bodies of work, though Tillmans himself might say they are all a part of the same body.

Tillmans won the Turner Prize in 2000. He is the first photographer to have won the Turner Prize (and controversially, the first non-British citizen to have done so) ^{[http://www.glbtq.com/arts/tillmans_w.html 1]} .

Bibliography

*" [http://www.amazon.com/dp/3822878812 Burg] "
*" [http://www.amazon.com/dp/1891024361 Portraits] "
*" [http://www.amazon.com/dp/3883752738 Concorde] "
*" [http://www.amazon.com/dp/1891771264 Still Life] "
*" [http://www.amazon.com/dp/3775710841 View from Above] "
*" [http://www.amazon.com/dp/3822846406 Truth study center] "
*" [http://www.amazon.com/dp/3865601324 Manual] "
*" [http://www.amazon.com/dp/1854374850 If one thing matters, everything matters] "
*" [http://www.amazon.com/dp/3865212638 Freedom from the Known] "
*" [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300120222 Wolfgang Tillmans] "

References

Contributions

2008 "Life on Mars," the 2008 "Carnegie International" [http://blog.cmoa.org/CI08/2008/02/wolfgang-tillmans.php]

Sources cited

[http://www.glbtq.com/arts/tillmans_w.html "Wolfgang Tillmans," by J. Marcus Weekley, www.glbtq.com]

External links

* [http://www.tillmans.co.uk/ Wolfgang Tillmans' Website]
* [http://www.berlinerposterverlag.com/ Wolfgang Tillmans at Berliner Poster Verlag]
* [http://artnews.com/issues/issue.asp Shooting from the Hip] , Art News, October 2007