Essay Sample on the Contemporary Artist: Wolfgang Tillman

Introduction

Wolfgang Tillmans is regarded as one of the most influential contemporary artists and photographers. Emerging in the 1990s with his snapshots documentation of the youths and the LGBTQ culture, his practice and influence have tremendously expanded to integrate various forms of artistic expressions such the diaristic photography, large-scale abstraction, and the commissioned magazines. Born on August 16, 1968, Tillmans spent his early part of his artistic career in London after graduating from Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design. It is through this period that Tillmans was entirely able to develop and practice his interests in art and photography. He has worked in a range of styles that include portraits, still life, landscape, and the photographs of the sky. In a previous interview, Tillmans has stated that his major push for success is the desire to offer the best to his audience as well as the desire to act as the role model to the young generation whose lives are reflected in the information depicted in the artistic works. As such, the Tillman's arts work in both the directions, meaning that they speak about him and at the same time function in terms of the viewers and his audience.

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Since the beginning of the 1980s, Tillmans' work combined the intimacy and the playfulness with the social commentary, alongside his ongoing question of the basis of his most utilized medium of art, photography. A close look at Tillmans' work would reveal that his bodies of work tremendously challenge the familiar and the ordinary help perception regarding the photographic media for artistic expressions and the contemporary image-making. Tillman was awarded the Turner Prize in 2000 for having been the most influential non-British artists and a former student of the Bournemouth & Poole College, England. Fifteen years later in 2015, he was awarded the prestigious Hasselblad Award.

Tillmans' aspect of practice has been further influenced by the desire to go with the trend and giving the audience the products they would like to see or hear. In the view of Tillmans, this would be the utilization of some technological advancements when it comes to photography. Notably, his debut exhibition of 1988 encompassed the artistic works solely designed through the use of the current monochrome laser-copyright technology of the time. In all his artistic creations and photography, Tillmans is focused on toying the relationship between the surface, depth, and materiality. He has made numerous return to this method over the years.

The period around the early 1990s constituted to a most pivotal period in his professional career as an artist and a photographer. Undeniably, his works featured in numerous prominent publications such as the i-D and Interview. Notably, it was around this period that Tillmans became prominent through his relaxed, snapshot-like images of young people within his surroundings. Majority of people undeniably perceived the arts as the objects and documents that reflected the developing queer culture. He, however, denied being considered a chronicler of London's queer but he believed that staging his documents and artistic works enabled him to control some aspects of London's art industry such as the costumes and poses. He photographed the sweating bodies and the dilated pupils at the Soundshaft club in London. However, it is important to mention that Tillmans admire the 1920s artists such as the Christian Schad and George Grosz who greatly inspired him for their artistic works which achieved both the hedonistic and political achievements.

Tillmans' move to New York City in 1994 immensely contributed to the significant achievements he received at that time. He continued to develop the installation techniques that non-hierarchically placed the frameless arts and images either taped or pinned directly onto the gallery walls. In the mix, the colored photographs were positioned just adjacent to the inkjet prints which further abutted ephemera such as postcards and magazine clippings of his earlier work. Undeniably, these installations depicted his interests in the site-responsive exhibition making as well as his fascination in the approaching exhibitions spaces as the backdrops for the larger meta-composition of the artistic works that are independent. Tillmans, therefore, involved himself in the practice and creation of a wide array of arts and diversified to different genres, and these ranged from still life, portraiture, aerial photography, and landscape, to his known sky photographic expression, such as those in Concorde Grid that he designed in 1997.

Tillmans practice has been guided by the unique aspects that he employs throughout his work. This kind of technique currently makes his artistic expression unique and easily embraceable by the young people who intend to follow his footsteps. Notably, the exhibition "Rebuilding the Future" greatly portrayed Tillmans' strength and prowess when it comes to the matter relating to photography and another type of artwork. Ideally, the Rebuilding the Future expanded Tillmans' unique approach, not only to the design and creation of his artworks but also the design of the exhibitions as a mechanism to develop the experience of the work and ultimately conduct the amplification of specific perspective. As part of his work, therefore, Tillmans has been able to perform the installation of hundreds of pieces that consists of the photography, moving images, and the artistic works on paper through special consideration of the architectural structure and atmosphere of the museum. This makes full use of the wall space and the relationships between the works in a provided mechanism as part of the whole narrative of the exhibition.

As part of this development, therefore, Tillmans' Rebuilding the Future exhibition has been tremendously conceived as an open question and for the audience and visitors to conduct their interpretation. Undeniably, the exhibition features various artistic works that reflect on the objects of the time and which addresses various thematic issues which perhaps can be found in the actual society. The show further carries Tillmans' inquiry into what it means to design and create a good artistic work in the current world that has been dominated with many advancements in terms of technology and trending everyday issues in an increasingly image-saturated environment. While it is evident that Tillmans' arts and photographs are a tremendously powerful tool that can be used to persuade people, studies have shown that they carry huge symbolic meanings in their material fragility. In the view of Tillmans, the majority of his work is influenced by the happenings and events in his surroundings or rather things that are anticipated in real life and are yet to happen. Tillmans' believes that art is a reflection of our real life and experiences. The things that happen in our lives can be replicated and put down on paper and materials. As such, a given artistic photograph by Tillmans will carry specific themes and which will undeniably require good interpretation of the audience to gain the understanding and the deeper meaning of the whole thing. Tillmans believes that there is a significant potent contradiction in the real strength and presence of art or photograph, in addition to its vividness and instability. As such, each work will follow a given expression and style based on the content, and the theme it wants to express to its audience and at what specific time.

Politically-Related Artworks

Tillman has further been involved in the creation of the politically-related arts, which have played a critical role in shaping the politics of the world. According to Tillmans, the political events and issues must not be directly answered the way they are supposed to be, but through artwork. As such, Tillmans had been involved in the making of activist art. In 2016, for instance, he was involved in the distribution of a series of the pro-remain posters in the lead up to the EU referendum. As an individual like who is talented in switching between the genres and mediums, from installation to films, analog to digital, portraiture to abstraction to sculpture, the artistic posters were curiously heavy-handed because Tillman believes that his objectives were met and were received with high mixed reactions. Ideally, the vague slogans that seemed created to lament instead of convincing transformed Tillmans' beautiful artistic expressions and images of clouds and skies feel unexpectedly like underwhelming inspirational stock images.

The images designed therefore allows the politics to flow naturally from Tillmans from his visual instinct instead of the way around. As such, Tillmans works to change the existing narrative about what is known, things that people are attempting to avoid and so on. For example, there is a wryly understated emphasis on the safety rituals of international airports in the United Kingdom. In one signpost, for example, a photograph portrayed a cabinet in the UK airport full of shampoos bottles and involved in the listless conversation with itself with another security officer. Most of the people would pass over the inappropriate content of the airport interior. However, through his work, Tillman has been able to conjure up and analyze the contemporary anxiety relating to the whole scenario through confronting the viewers with what they are supposed to focus on whenever looking at such photographs. As such, Tillmans throughout his works is guided by his view and thoughts about beauty and what is generally accepted as a beauty, as well as how these kinds of aesthetic judgments are ordinarily the political judgments.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is evident that Wolfgang Tillmans is one of the greatest and the most influential contemporary artists of the 21st century. Tillmans has been able to change the existing narrative about just the aesthetic value of the art to an entirely new story. Through his arts and photography, Tillman has been able to show that arts and photographic images can be used to portray and address various issues that humans face in society. He is obsessively playing with the picture arrangement first in an architectural space maquette and later within the exhibition rooms with the aim of achieving the right balance as desired by his audience.