Freischwimmer TFL 150, 2013 Wolfgang Tillmans Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemuehle Photo-rag paper Size: 56 x 47.5 cm Edition of 100 Edition n. 100 of 100 Hand signed and numbered recto One of the most influential photographers working today, Wolfgang Tillmans has captured sweaty nightclubs, taken close-up shots of unclothed friends, and mastered the contemporary still life. The artist’s frames are often playful, intimate, and uninhibited; altogether, they conjure a youthful, messy utopia. Tillmans is famous for his omnivorous approach to both his subject matter and materials—he’s made sound installations, set designs, and photocopy prints. He’s also experimented with directly exposing photographic paper to the light. In 2000, Tillmans became the first photographer and the first non-Brit to win the prestigious Turner Prize. He has also received the Kulturpreis der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Photographie and the Hasselblad Award. At auction, his work has sold for six figures. In Wolfgang Tillmans’ Freischwimmer works, hypnotic pools of colour and light swim freely across the surface of the picture plane, sweeping and cascading in glowing elemental formations. Executed on a monumental scale, rippling tendrils and hazy miasmas shift in and out of focus, evocative of underwater kingdoms and intergalactic voids. Made in the dark room without a camera, the work takes its place within the artist’s celebrated Freischwimmer series, which elegantly challenges the boundaries between painting and photography. Using his hands as stencils, Tillmans directs light onto photographic paper, manipulating it across the surface to form incalculable fusions of colour and line. With examples held in international museum collections, including those of Tate, London, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, the Freischwimmer occupy pivotal territory in Tillmans’ ongoing exploration of the photographic medium. ‘In Freischwimmer there is the most depth in the pictorial space’, he asserts. ‘All associations with liquidity that the image and the name might suggest is made with light and without any liquids or other chemicals. It is important that these are not paintings: as the eye recognizes these as photographic, the association with machine in the head connects them to reality, whereas a painting is always understood by the eye as mark making by the artist’. Wolfgang Tillmans is one of the most important contemporary artist together with Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, Gerhard Richter, Ryan McGinley, Damien Hirst, Yayoi Kusama, Nan Goldin, Jeff Koons and many more. Print will be shipped flat.