Wolfgang Tillmans
Tate Modern
15 FEBRUARY - 11 JUNE
£12.50 (members free)
The first Photographer, and non-British artist to win the Turner prize back in 2000, Wolfgang Tillmans is considered a groundbreaking contemporary artist. This exhibition is an exploration of his work, featuring portraiture, intimate still lifes and landscapes.
The first thing to notice about Tillman's work is how stripped back and minimalist it is. He set up the entire exhibition himself at the Tate, and disallowed the usual accompanying text to be displayed on the walls - instead, this was only contained within the exhibition booklet. Many of his works were held up using clips and clear sellotape, giving them a raw and naked appearance; as if they had just been developed in the studio.
Tillmans work has beautiful detail, most of the images are blown up to huge proportions - twice the height of myself (and I'm pretty tall...) The enlarging of the images does not seem to have altered the quality or sharpness of the content, each image is clear cut and crisp. Tillmans I feel needs to have this quality of detail, otherwise many of the images become quite meaningless. Personally, I feel that the content of Tillmans work is quite uninspiring, and I was surprised at how I didn't actually enjoy the exhibition anywhere near as much as I thought I would.
Political connotations and social unrest run through much of Tillman's work - there are images of protest and intimate portraits of forbidden lovers. Everything feels strongly personal, and even voyeuristic at times (que the hands down pants and naked male testicles). Some of Tillmans work shocks, but the majority of it just left me confused. The exhibition as a whole was disjointed and the context was unclear. Tillmans work seemed to jump from one theme to another, with no structure or theme running through it. These are snapshots from Tillman's life, and I guess life itself is disjointed and hectic - but this for me didn't work as an exhibition.
The exhibition also includes some immersive elements and digital media. The video of Tillman's dancing alongside his shadow had some pretentious reasoning behind it, along the lines of "the ghost which follows us all", and a playback room filled with studio recorded music aims to encourage us to appreciate the sound as it was originally recorded. The songs included here were not Tillman's own, and the ideas behind this room, along with those of the video recording, just ended up being a bit too far fetched.
Tillman's exhibition is revealing, intimate and detailed. However, it lacks purpose and structure - the works are splayed over the walls in a disorganised and muddled way. A few works in the exhibition are redeeming in terms of the beautiful detail obtained, but the exhibition as a whole left me unsatisfied, craving something powerful but left with a weak and ineffective result.
OVERALL RATING: ***
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/wolfgang-tillmans-2017
