By incorporating abstract forms into his pictures, Wolfgang Tillmans challenges the potentialities of photography. Bordering on the abstract, Paper Drop is a detailed representation of a paper sheet with little contextualization. This ambiguity is purposefully portrayed by the artist, instead, the camera seeks to celebrate the shimmering and gleaming polychrome surfaces of both the curling paper and the background. The paper not only performs a ‘dance’ of reflections and shadows inside the picture but also plays with the three-dimensionality of the physical photograph in front of the viewer. Against the idea of the existence of a pure white, Tillmans explores a number of photographically producible white tones of the paper, the background and the wall on which the photograph will be displayed. White mixes and mingles with the grey and other marginal hues creating an extremely tangible and sculptural image. The present lot exemplifies Tillmans successful and prolific battle with art showing that photography can be explored and considered outside of its use in documentary and decorative function. Questions about the narrative and purpose of the piece of paper, are conflated with a contemplation of a material within material, or rather, paper within paper. The play of line, form and colour are in a clear dialogue with the painterly tradition thus revealing that, despite the absence of paint on canvas or marble turned into sculpture, his abstract images are no less physical, artistic or indeed beautiful. German-born, Tillmans rose to international fame during the 1990s as a photorealist-style photographer. Subsequently, in 2000, Tillmans became the first photographer (and non English) artist to have been awarded the prestigious Turner Prize.