Wolfgang Tillmans: Things Matter

Combining two of his own long out-of-print exhibition catalogs, Tillmans creates an artist’s book that reviews his four-decade career through the prism of history

Published with Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

Few artists mirror our recent past as profoundly as German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans (born 1968). On the occasion of his exhibition Weltraum at the Albertinum in Dresden, Tillmans has created a unique artist’s book that places his practice in a thought-provoking dialogue not only with itself, but with the past and present of East and West Germany. Things Matter intertwines excerpts from a 1987 Dresden museum inventory with Tillmans’ exhibition catalog for his 2003 show If one thing matters, everything matters at Tate Britain, in which he devised a speculative catalogue raisonné of his early work. Both of these titles, now out of print, are revived and remixed in this artist’s book which also includes a new conversation with Tillmans, where he reflects on his artistic beginnings and examines the social and aesthetic implications of his work today. All in all, Things Matter is a series of associative constellations in the career of Wolfgang Tillmans: an intimate self-exploration set against the backdrop of historical upheavals.