Painting or photography – which medium do you expect behind Wolfgang Tillmans’ ‘Freischwimmer 193’ (2009)?
In painting and sculpture, the boundaries of abstraction are constantly being pushed: breaking the mold and a desire for experimentation are part of the process. In photography, too, artists are searching for new paths. A good example of this is the work of Wolfgang Tillmans, an artist living in Berlin and London.
How are Tillmans’ works created?
Through photographic experiments in the darkroom, Tillmans developed the Freischwimmer series in the early 2000s. What began as an accident later evolved—through deliberate intervention—into a fascinating body of work. Chance played a role when unintended structures appeared on his photographs during a chemical development process. The results intrigued Tillmans, and he soon began to creatively harness the delicate threads and cloud-like formations that emerged.
In doing so, Tillmans created images without using a camera or a subject. Although the title of the series might initially suggest an association with flowing chemicals, the structures actually result from the movement of light. The artist controls this light with his hands and by using light-emitting tools. In a way, he paints with light!
Tillmans later scanned the developed images and printed them at an impressive scale. Freischwimmer 193, one of seven works by the photographer from the Reinhard Ernst Collection, measures 227 × 171 cm.
The fine line between photography and painting
Tillmans exposed and developed his works in the darkroom. From a purely technical standpoint, the work of art can therefore be considered a photograph—yet it does not depict anything concrete. The structures in the image, which resemble flowing, ephemeral veils of colour, are simply a play with the medium of photography. Through his original experiments, Tillmans develops a new visual language in which the boundary between abstract photography and painting quite literally begins to blur.
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