‘Material realities’: German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans’ unedited views of the world on display in Hong Kong show
- Moonrise above a dark sea, flowers on a windowsill against a snowy backdrop, a deliberately blurred planetary shot – German captures reality his own way
- The point of the images in his exhibition at David Zwirner in Central is to show information beyond the materiality and surface of things, the 55-year-old says
Six years after his first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, photographer Wolfgang Tillmans returned to the city recently with his unfiltered, unedited and altogether untouched images.
“The Point Is Matter”, the 55-year-old German-born artist’s second show at David Zwirner Hong Kong, consists of more than 80 works, ranging from images taken in the mid-1990s to others captured recently in Hong Kong and in Shenzhen, southern China.
In addition a video installation, Four Videos of Build from Here, dominates one of the gallery rooms, accompanied by electronic music from Tillmans’ upcoming second album, Build From Here, to be released on April 26.
The visuals are mesmerising; one clip zooms in on the inner workings of an industrial offset printer from various angles, while another frames the moonrise above a dark sea as the artist’s silhouette moves against the shimmering reflection. In another scene, the moon glides across the screen.
Tillmans, who became the first photographer and non-British artist to be awarded the UK’s prestigious Turner Prize in 2000, says he is obsessed with astronomy and the vastness of space. The video captured the real-time movement of the moon seen through a telescope.
