Photo

Art Review: “Wolfgang Tillmans”

Allison Ashmore
Published: Wednesday, October 18, 2006

“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.