L&rsquo;Officiel&nbsp;speaks with the multidimensional creator about his new museum exhibition and the deeper meanings he hopes audiences glean from his work.

Wolfgang Tillmans has long looked to the world around him for creative inspiration. Whether his image chronicles of nightlife and youth culture or his experiments in abstraction, vivid emotion shines through in all his work. The many facets of his artistry come together in his first New York museum survey, Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear. Opening at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the exhibition unfolds across the entirety of the museum&rsquo;s sixth floor, where more than 350 art pieces&mdash;photographs, videos, and multimedia installations&mdash;tell the story of the Tillmans&rsquo; life&rsquo;s work to date.

The showcase is based on a loose chronology with photographs displayed in the artist&rsquo;s signature juxtaposed style. Guided by feeling above content and form, he emphasizes viewer engagement and his work as a means to strengthen human bonds. "I would like to encourage a feeling of empathy in others. I hope that I can translate feelings, visual observations, and sentiments into pictures that allow you to connect through a similar experience you might have had," Tillmans tells L'Officiel. "Or that you see in a person, in the way I photograph her or him, something that is in you, that speaks to you, and that connects us through a photograph."
To look without fear begins with images inspired by the artist&rsquo;s interest in astronomy and his work with new technologies including telescopes, photocopiers, and video. The entrance features the casual yet impactful photo &ldquo;Victoria Park&rdquo; and his motion-centric &ldquo;untitled&rdquo; video of a bare leg&rsquo;s flexion captured on a smartphone. Then, the first gallery touches on the artist&rsquo;s prominent youth culture and nightlife motifs with early images such as &ldquo;Lutz &amp; Alex sitting in the tree&rdquo; and &ldquo;Chemistry Squares&rdquo; that were published in i-D magazine. In the second gallery, the artist&rsquo;s fascination with music and performance is evidenced by a portrait of DJ Joanne &ldquo;Smokin&rsquo; Jo&rdquo; Joseph and his &ldquo;wall of speakers&rdquo; picture from a Jamaican ragga music festival.

A third gallery pays tribute to Tillmans&rsquo; boundless pursuit of form outside photography conventions. Still lifes of clothing in various modes comprise his &ldquo;Faltenwurf&rdquo; pieces, borrowing the German word for &ldquo;drapery.&rdquo; While abstract, otherworldly pictorials such as &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to get over you&rdquo; reveal the artist&rsquo;s experiments with darkroom techniques, producing gestural images as haunting as they are profound.
Tillmans&rsquo; endeavours into video make up the fourth gallery with electronic music, ambient sounds, technology, and imagery. Video pieces &ldquo;Lights (Body)&rdquo; and &ldquo;Peas&rdquo; demonstrate the range of his subjects and creative environments. Then, the fifth gallery shows &ldquo;Soldiers: The Nineties,&rdquo; a geopolitical work that explores tensions between the media and global events. A sixth gallery blurs abstraction and representation in the artist&rsquo;s experimental &ldquo;paper drops,&rdquo; &ldquo;Lighter,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Silvers&rdquo; projects, delving into the formal effects of gravity, colour, and material. While the central space in the exhibition offers a version of Tillmans&rsquo; Truth Study Center with photos, images, and newspaper clippings that question absolutism&mdash;and implicitly, whether plural views provide a more authentic resolve.

Finally, the seventh gallery demonstrates the artist&rsquo;s digital camera work across portraiture, still life, landscape, street photography, and architectural studies in &ldquo;Neue Welt (New Worlds),&rdquo; as well as images of LGBTQ+ and Black Lives Matter scenes. Additional listening spaces introduce Tillmans&rsquo; &lsquo;audio photography&rsquo; through his first album Moon in Earthlight, a combination of spoken word, ambient sounds, and electronic music. A final note for the showcase, his largest photograph, &ldquo;wake&rdquo;&mdash;the aftermath of a farewell party at his London studio&mdash;is shown alongside a collaborative, mirrored work with sculptor German Isa Genzken, &ldquo;Science Fiction / Hier und jetzt zufrieden sein,&rdquo; which translates to &ldquo;happy in the here and now.&rdquo; And in so many ways, Tillmans is.
"As an artist, you cannot control exactly what your artwork does to others. It is a laboratory on looking, seeing, and trying to make pictures about what it feels like to live today for the last 35 years,&rdquo; says the artist. &ldquo;The only thing you have is the hope that in some way, it speaks to others. I hope that visitors have moments in the exhibition where they feel&mdash;'I know how that smelled&rsquo; or &lsquo;I remember how that touch felt and I have felt like this before.&rsquo; That is a sense of solidarity and not being alone in the world."

In fact, it was Tillmans&rsquo; quest for connectedness and his innate worldly curiosity that first piqued his interest in the arts. Born in Remscheid, Germany, the artist (b. 1968) began visiting museums in his youth. Later, when he moved to England as an exchange student, he became enamoured with the British youth culture and music that would become a central part of his oeuvre. He continued to build his body of work while living between Germany&mdash;largely Berlin&mdash;and London, as well as a year spent in New York in 1994. There he met German painter Jochen Klein, who was a major influence on Tillmans&rsquo; life and art. They began a relationship and lived together until Klein&rsquo;s death from AIDS-related complications in 1997 when the artist discovered that he too was HIV positive.
Tillmans&rsquo; works have brought awareness to significant contemporary issues such as AIDS, LGBTQ+ communities, international military efforts, and human rights. His nonprofit gallery <a href="https://www.betweenbridges.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Between Bridges</a> operates an advocacy space that exhibits and supports artists&rsquo; political and social projects. In the process of defining his own m&eacute;tier and campaigning for cause representation, his work has been recognized with numerous distinctions. Notably, the artist was the first photographer&mdash;and the first non-British person&mdash;to be awarded the esteemed Turner Prize.

Despite his many accolades, Tillmans is steadfastly focused on his creative practice and how that can apply to broader life experiences. "I think it is evident that being in the moment is all we have. All of the worldly riches&mdash;none of them can be permanently preserved and we cannot take them with us,&rdquo; he shares. &ldquo;We live our lives constantly in the protection of different futures, and hopes and fears, or of our pasts. Very little time is used for the now. Even with photography, every moment that you photograph, you are not living as purely as you can. It is a huge paradox&mdash;it is a wonder and a joy to make photographs, but it is less about trying to hold onto the moments. It is really all about the here and now."
For the past three decades, the artist&rsquo;s images have documented the world around us, bringing personal and interpersonal moments into close view. Free and open glimpses of living leave audiences to decipher their own connections, while Tillmans&rsquo; ethics of care and compassion readily show through them. These select moments tell stories beyond what we see, they are moments that touch the human spirit. In tender and vulnerable images, the artist speaks to beauty, awareness, and the collective human experience itself.

Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear is on view from now till 1 January 2023 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition will then travel to the Art Gallery of Ontario and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Wolfgang Tillmans Reveals a Connected Worldview in His Much-Awaited MoMA Retrospective

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