Installation
32 Chromogenic prints; 2 Chromogenic prints mounted on Dibond aluminum in artist’s frame; 2 Chromogenic prints, plexiglass, and wood; 5 inkjet prints on paper; 7 inkjet prints on paper; 8 tables and 43 sheets of paper
In a career spanning over 25 years, Wolfgang Tillmans has created photographs that have epitomized an original kind of subjectivity, pairing intimacy and playfulness with social critique and the persistent questioning of existing values and hierarchies.
Comprising 48 photographic prints in varying sizes as well as a multipart sculpture, New York Installation PCR, 525 is one of the largest and most complex stand-alone installations the artist has created. Photographs of activists and demonstrators in cities around the world become intertwined with those of friends at leisure, glimpses into Tillmans’s private life and studio practice, and abstract imagery. The arrangement echoes the broader tension within his oeuvre between the political and the personal. The sculpture, titled I refuse to be your enemy, consists of blank sheets of paper neatly laid out on tables of different heights, underscoring the artist’s long-standing emphasis on materiality. The non-hierarchical composition of the overall installation encourages viewers to make their own parallels between works, subsequently encouraging a multitude of aesthetic and social associations.