Warming Up
The artist Wolfgang Tillmans discusses the work process he undertook for the major exhibition he is preparing at the Centre Pompidou for June 2025, Rien ne nous préparait y - Tout nous préparait y, for which he transforms the entire plateau of level 2 into a single installation. He establishes a dialogue between his work and the space of the Bibliothèque publique d'information (Bpi), which he occupies for the occasion, questioning it both as architecture and as a place for the transmission of knowledge.
As part of the Photo Extra-Large Chair supported by Neuflize OBC.
In partnership with the Centre Pompidou
From the outset of his career, Wolfgang Tillmans has questioned the possibility of producing images, and in so doing, has infused photography with a new subjectivity. He explores traditional genres such as portraiture, still life and landscape with a constant interest in the limits of the visible. Issues of value and existing hierarchies are thus raised through a play of associations combining intimacy and social critique. Through the use of diverse genres, subjects, techniques and exhibition concepts, Tillmans expands conventional ways of approaching photography, and raises fundamental questions about the creation of the image in an increasingly visually saturated world.
In 2000, he was the first non-British photographer and artist to receive the Turner Prize from Tate Modern, London. He was the winner of the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (2015), as well as the Kaiserring 2018 from the city of Goslar, Germany.
His exhibition at the Centre Pompidou marks his first institutional monograph in Paris since his ambitious installation at the Palais de Tokyo in 2002.
In recent years, Wolfgang Tillmans has been the subject of major retrospectives at prestigious institutions, including London's Tate Modern in 2017 and New York's MoMA in 2022. He has also curated a major touring exhibition across Africa entitled Fragile (from 2018 to 2022, in Kinshasa, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Addis Ababa, Yaoundé, Accra, Abidjan, Lagos).
In recent years, Wolfgang Tillmans' work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at AGO, Toronto (2023); SFMOMA, San Francisco (2023); MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2022); mumok, Vienna (2021); Wiels Brussels (2020) ; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2019); Carré d'art, Nîmes (2018); Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel (2017); Tate Modern, London (2017); Fundação de Serralves, Porto (2016); The National Museum of Modern Art, Osaka (2015), as well as group exhibitions: Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2023); Bourse de Commerce, Fondation Pinault, Paris (2022); Centre Pompidou Metz (2021); Fondation Beyeler, Riehen (2021); The Kitchen, New York (2020); Barbican Centre, London (2020) ; Museum of Modern Art, New York (2019); MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2019); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019); MMK, Frankfurt (2018) or Villa Medici, Rome (2018), among others.
His works can be found in the collections of major museums around the world.
Photo credit: © Centre Pompidou
