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Photos at a Wolfgang Tillmans
exhibition hang unmatted and unframed --
taped up or suspended from binder clips and grouped in clusters.
Wandering through one exhibit at New York's Andrea Rosen Gallery, I got
the sense that Tillmans (who installs his own shows) may have reproduced
the walls of his bedroom, back home in London, to a T. It's of the utmost
importance to the photographer that his work be contextualized, and while
the detritus of his restless life as a fashion photographer and
youth-culture documentarian -- dirty laundry, untouched fruit platters, dirty ashtrays,
unmade beds -- weren't strewn around the Rosen gallery,
they did grace the walls as subversive still lifes, alongside portraits
of Kate Moss and naked people playing in trees.
Departing Tillmans' reconstructed world, I felt like a friend-of-a-friend who'd crashed at his pad for a day or two while traveling through Germany or England. Maybe I'd slept on his couch, heard his boyfriend tiptoe by late at night, tagged along to a nightclub or a friend's house, but while I'd enjoyed vivid encounters with others in his tightly-knit circle, my host remained a mystery. -GF |
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