TILLMANS, WOLFGANG
1968 Remscheid

Title: Mental Picture #62..
Date: 2002.
Technique: Inkjet printing.
Depiction Size: 372.6 x 263.6 cm.
Sheet Size: 377.6 x 266.6 cm.


This work is an artist's proof, in addition to the single-copy edition. It can be hung in portrait or landscape orientation. This work is accompanied by a certificate from the artist from 10.5.2009.



The studio will produce a new copy for the buyer.



Provenance:
- - Private collection USA

- Leo Koenig Inc., New York


Exhibition:
- Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2002

- Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk 2003

- Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo 2004


Literature:
- Wolfgang Tillmans: Abstract Pictures, Ostfildern 2011, cat. no. 109, ill.



- Tillmans has been honoured with major retrospectives at venues including Tate Modern, London; the Foundation Beyerle, Basel; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris

- From the early abstract ‘Mental Pictures’ series, in an impressive format

- A freshly made print, direct from the artist’s studio



A Boundary-Crosser of Photography

Hardly any other artist has disrupted the art world over recent decades as profoundly—in terms of genre, aesthetics, technique, and exhibition strategies—as Wolfgang Tillmans, born in 1968 in Remscheid. Already in the early 1990s, Tillmans gained international recognition through his photographic work for the magazine i-D. His early images captured the carefree spirit of youth, club, and LGBTQ culture, combining documentary observation with a new kind of photographic intimacy.

Over the course of his career, Tillmans has continuously expanded his artistic spectrum. Alongside photography, he works with installation, video, and music. Equally remarkable is the thematic breadth of his oeuvre, which encompasses portraits, nude studies, still lifes, landscapes, and abstract compositions that move fluidly between nature and cosmos, travel and nightlife. In 2000, he became both the first photographer and the first non-British artist to receive the Turner Prize. Major retrospectives followed, including exhibitions at the Tate Modern, the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, the Museum of Modern Art, and, most recently, the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Around the turn of the millennium, Tillmans began intensively exploring the possibilities of abstraction in photography. At this point, he was primarily known for socially critical works, and his shift toward non-representational photography was therefore met with considerable surprise. Tillmans himself understands abstraction as a necessary component of a multifaceted inquiry into perception and truth. In particular, the combination of diverse styles enables him to investigate—both aesthetically and sociopolitically—how images construct reality and what claims to truthfulness they make.



Mental Pictures #62 – A Monumental Explosion of Color in Abstract Photography

Tillmans organizes his abstract oeuvre into five families of works, distinguished according to process, visual appearance, or underlying conceptual inquiry. The present work, Mental Pictures #62 (2002), is one of approximately 120 pieces from the eponymous Mental Pictures series. Together with the Super Colliders, Tillmans groups them within the family of explosive light compositions.

Since 2000, Tillmans has developed this body of photographs composed of luminograms and photograms, created entirely in the darkroom and realized without the use of a camera or negative.

In Mental Pictures #62, a pulsating web of light and color unfolds before the viewer. Kaleidoscopic shades of luminous green and yellow interact dynamically, interrupted by shadows of black, red, and blue. To achieve this effect, Tillmans places colored string lights directly onto light-sensitive photographic paper and exposes it. The wires and light bulbs remain partially visible, forming the point of departure for a complex entanglement of light traces and fields of color that evoke the luminous atmosphere of a nightclub.

Through its monumental scale, the image exerts an almost physical force. Viewing it challenges eye, body, and imagination alike. At the same time, it resists any singular interpretation: viewers are invited to form their own associations and question the presumed significance of the title.

Tillmans expands the boundaries of photography by liberating it from the task of recording visible reality and transforming it into an instrument of pure image production. Light directly shapes the surface, while chemical reactions and controlled manipulations determine the pictorial process. Mental Pictures #62 combines deliberate intervention with chance. The result is an energetic monument of color capable of transporting the viewer into an almost intoxicated, dreamlike state.

Sophie Ballermann



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#Wolfgang Tillmans #Photographs #Germany #Contemporary Art #Photography #2000s #Abstract #Photographs.



This lot will be sold under standard taxation (Condition of Sale §V5.1)







In accordance with §26 UrhG (German Copyright Act), VAN HAM is obliged to pay a statutory resale royalty on the sale proceeds of all original works of fine art and photography whose authors have not been deceased for 70 years prior to the end of the calendar year of the sale. The buyer shall contribute 1.5% of the hammer price to this fee.