Wolfgang Tillmans : On the Verge of Visibility

For his first exhibition in Portugal, Wolfgang Tillmans (1968, Remscheid, Germany) continues to expand the possibilities for the reception of his oeuvre through a radical repositioning of its multiple dimensions. At Serralves, he pays particular attention to what he describes as his “Vertical Landscapes,” photographs of the natural phenomena of light when day meets night, sky meets earth, cloud meets sky. Dating from 1995 until the present, and printed in scales ranging from the standard size of photographic printing paper, to the panoramic expanse of four metres in size, the photographs encapsulate the expressive potential of Tillman’s highly developed visual formalism, and his engagement with photography as inherently physical as it is immaterial. In their unnerving beauty, produced partially by the technical advances in camera manufacturing and partly by the photographer’s insistence on allowing those advances to show, they create a challenge to the canon of visual cool preeminent in today’s visual culture.

The exhibition will be site-specific, in its response to the particular architectural context of its presentation in the museum and through the inclusion of new photographic material. Presented as a visual and architectural intervention across 1000 sq metres of the Serralves Museum’s galleries, together with a suite of installations of newly produced video works, the exhibition promises to be an immersive environment of threshold states.

Since establishing his reputation in the youth and club culture of 1990s London, Tillmans has become one of the most influential artists of our time. His continued exploration of photography as a means to communicate reality is one that inspires and moves in its wonder and its intelligence. For Tillmans, reality is not only visual, social, economic and political, it is organic, bodily, and phenomenal, from the bodies of friends and family to the constellations of cities and plants, the celestial galaxies of night skies and the exquisite abstractions created from the impact of light in the photographic process itself. If the medium of photography and its processes provide the foundation to Tillman’s work, his engagement with place and his choreographic use of space and scale constitute a world in which images of people and places and object-like registrations of light are part of an interconnected, physical and cosmic whole.

Wolfgang Tillmans: On the Verge of Visibility is organized by the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto and curated by Suzanne Cotter, Director of the Museum, assisted by exhibition curator Paula Fernandes.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a new artist book by Tillmans, edited and designed by the artist. The publication will expand on the concept of the exhibition and will also include a text by Suzanne Cotter.

Coinciding with the artist’s exhibition at Serralves, his video works from 1987 to 2015 will be screened at the Museum’s Auditorium. The videos highlight Tillmans’ love of music, which is a recurring theme in his biography and work.  

A programme of tours and talks accompanies the exhibition.

About Serralves
The Serralves Museum of Contemporary is the foremost museum for contemporary art in Portugal, and one of Europe’s most renowned institutions for contemporary art and culture. Uniquely sited on the grounds of the Serralves Foundation, which also comprises a park and the Serralves Villa, a landmark Art Deco building, the Museum designed by Álvaro Siza opened in 1999. Through its exhibitions, collection, publications, performing arts, and public programmes, the museum fosters the understanding and appreciation of contemporary art and culture in Portugal and around the world.