This enigmatic work is from Wolfgang Tillmans’ series Lighter in which chromogenic prints are folded or crumpled by the artist and then stored in individual box frames, highlighting their object quality. The resulting works are titled according to a numerical sequence and their colouring. Tillmans’ experimental process blurs the line between two and three-dimensional entities: photography and sculpture.
Since the early 1990s, Wolfgang Tillmans has pushed the boundaries of the photographic medium. Challenging the indexical nature traditionally associated with photography, his abstract and representational photographic bodies of work each in their own way put forward the notion of the photograph as object—rather than as a record of reality. While achieving his breakthrough with portraits and lifestyle photographs, documenting celebrity culture as well as LGBTQ communities and club culture, since the turn of the millennium the German photographer has notably created abstract work such as the Freischwimmer series, which is made in the darkroom without a camera.
Seamlessly integrating genres, subject matters, techniques and exhibition strategies, Tillmans is known for photographs that pair playfulness and intimacy with a persistent questioning of dominant value and hierarchy structures of our image-saturated world. In 2000, Tillmans was the first photographer to receive the prestigious Turner Prize.
2008 Unique chromogenic print within artist's plexiglass box. Image/ Sheet: 60.5 x 50.7 cm (23 7/8 x 19 7/8 in.) Frame: 64.6 x 54.4 cm (25 3/8 x 21 3/8 in.) Titled, dated, annotated, numbered and signed 'Lighter, white II 2008 unique Wolfgang Tillmans 08-086-U' in pencil on the verso.