Art Review: “Wolfgang Tillmans”
By Allison Ashmore
Oct. 17, 2006 9:00 p.m.
“Wolfgang Tillmans”
UCLA Hammer Museum
Open until Jan. 7
(Out of 5)
Objects like socks and houses may not be the first things one
thinks about when it comes to art, but under Wolfgang
Tillmans’ watchful camera lens, these everyday materials
become something more transcendent.
The German photographer’s retrospective exhibition at the
UCLA Hammer Museum, on view until Jan. 7, is a collection of
photographic and video works drawn from his entire career. The
installations of large, engulfing photographs and small, intimate
portraits have a compelling monumentality. Simple objects, such as
discarded jeans, newspaper clippings and dyed flowers, and common
events, such as the mess after a party, removing splinters, and a
running dog take on grandeur and a geometric form that captivates
and provokes.
The themes of anticipation and life, and fading and death,
permeate Tillmans’ work. He contrasts seemingly incongruent
images, some radiating harmony and exuberance, alongside others
which portray death and decay.
For Tillmans, these opposing forces define and complete each
other. In one image, two hands are clasped across a hospital
blanket; a heart monitor is attached to one of them. Next to this
is a confrontational image of an urban youth smoking a cigarette.
The exchange between these images resonates with fragile power and
recognizes the delicate potency inherent in every moment.
As revealed in approximately 300 photographs, Tillmans’
aesthetic is distant and familiar, inviting and unpleasant, and
tender and haunting. He documents youth culture, specifically the
punks, clubbers and ravers.
The free-living, anarchic beauties who wander the streets or
jostle on the dance floors are the objects of Tillmans’
gaze.
Each photograph garners new dimensions of meaning in its
carefully composed placement within his larger body of work in the
exhibit.
The expansive “Urgency II” (2006) swallows the
viewer in an opening of tactile abstraction. The vibrant color and
light effects evoke subconscious desires to find meaning; the
physical presence of this manipulation of light has disarming
power.
Near “Urgency II” is “Genom” (2002), a
small frame which triggers new contemplation, as the familiar scene
of black socks strewn on a hardwood floor jolts the viewer back to
reality. But, in the face of the just-experienced transcendence
after viewing “Urgency II,” the everyday takes on new
meaning. The sock is no longer a sock, but a distant memory; the
messy hallway is no longer messy, but a familiar past ““ a
cold winter or perhaps a fervent love encounter.
In 1991, folds captured the lens of Tillmans’ camera, as
he exploited the narrative aspects inherent in clothing. The formal
qualities of folded, crumpled or strewn fabrics, raised the
discarded clothes and crumpled sheets of the every day to a level
of contemplation.
The 1997 series of photographs of the supersonic aircraft
“Concorde” analyzes the fascination with the
technological and displaces the aircraft in a hyper-real
environment of irregular light and perspective.
Tillmans also photographed still lifes of food. He composes the
objects that he captures; yet this formal scrutiny does not
permeate the naturalness and simplicity of the event. The still
life has an eerie lived-in quality that is reminiscent of visited
homes filled with unexpected clutter and moldy fruit.
In these pseudo-documentary photographs, Tillmans is extremely
careful in portraying his vision of everyday objects and events.
His ever-ready lens awaits the fleeting moments of an aesthetically
scrutinized encounter.
