WARSAW.- Zachęta Ermutigung, the first individual exhibition in Poland of works by the world famous photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, has been prepared by the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf in cooperation with Zachęta National Gallery of Art. In the late 1980s, this artist (born in 1968 in Remscheid, near to Düsseldorf) living in London and Berlin started to experiment in an unconventional way with black and white prints and photographic enlargements of various details. In the 1990s, he came to the fore with works that included snapshot portraits of young people from his surroundings, in particular that of subculture circles. His name became known to a wider public in 2000, when he became the first non-British artist and photographer to be awarded the prestigious Turner Prize.

Wolfgang Tillmans is continuously broadening the thematic scope of his works – which encompass portraits, interiors, landscapes, still lives and abstract photography. The artist also concentrates on the process of photography itself, on trying to make use of its range of possibilities. He unceasingly investigates the borders of the medium and experiments with ways of presenting his works, combining different types of photography, and diverse formats and materials. Through this he has succeeded in creating not only a new photographic language, but also his own forms of exhibition, showing his photographs and collages in unusual installations. The artist treats the exhibition area as a whole, dividing its space with his works: in this way he focuses particularly on the painterly and sculptural dimensions of his works, and the composition of the elements of an exhibition in architecture.

In Zachęta, Wolfgang Tillmans presents a configuration of works created especially for the gallery rooms, demonstrating the themes and motifs that have been photographically preoccupying him over the last ten years. Thus, at the exhibition are to be found abstract photographs from the series paper drops and Freischwimmer, as well as a selection from newer works – Weltbilder. Also to be shown are five video works by the artist and his truth study center tables, in other words installations on tables which, in a similar way to a documentary archive combine photography with press cuttings, photocopies, offset prints and fliers. The exhibition will be accompanied by a German-Polish catalogue with a richly illustrated section presenting works by the artist, and texts by Isabelle Malz, Jacek Dehnel, Hanna Wróblewska and Wolfgang Tillmans himself.

curator Isabelle Malz
co-operation Anna Tomczak