- Venue
- Andrea Rosen Gallery
- Location
- United States
Workshop, Bedroom, Gallery, Classroom. there's something of each of these in the layout of Tillmans' most recent photography exhibition. Huge framed images adorn the walls next to small prints stuck up with Sellotape. In the centre pictures are laid out on rough tables that look like they've been nicked from the school design and technology room.
The result of this novel approach is that the viewer has greater freedom in constructing the materials of the exhibition and a greater awareness of participation in the constructive process.
Texts cut from magazines, menus, graffiti or advertising appear to be playing an increasingly large part in Tillmans' image world. However the texts do not form authoritative captions but instead are the endless raw materials of fieldwork whose remit cuts and flits restlessly across different subjects.
From the darkroom to the reproduction of the image in magazines, almost every stage of the photo process is contained in the show. The work of previous exhibitions are returned to as a way of monitoring the shifts in meaning that have been forced upon photographs. Yet rather than a sense of despair at this loss of control Tillmans' work embodies an enthusiasm for remix and re-negotiation of meaning.
The most unfamiliar addition to Tillmans' oeuvre here are three huge photos that have been enlarged from newspaper quality images. The result is dull grey tones and pigmentation of the image reminiscent of the dot matrix experiments of Sigmar Polke. The images upon which Tillmans has effected this change are not newsworthy playgirls, car crashes or race riots but two friends sitting in Victoria Park, a photo shoot set up and nondescript image of Venice. Closed to any obvious interpretation these images seem united only in their satire of the current art market's insatiable appetite for hyper real large format photography.
Critics would certainly take such images as prime examples of Tillmans' undergraduate mix of heady conceptual enthusiasm and shoddy production. But it's clearly the viewer's choice to join the dots or walk away. Tillmans' non-privileged world-view may not leave forceful visual impressions but can create a renewed sense of curiosity about how the photograph mediates the world around us.
