wolfgang tillmans–for when i am week i’m strong.
his photographs seem almost accidental, i have this catalog beside me from a mid90s show at Kunstmusuem in Wohlberg, and when i try to explain the photos they seem so ordinary. But they move me, in a way that is basic and clean– making a list of the images is like making a poem, one part WCW, one part O’Hara, a dash of Rilke. I’m being pretentious again, and he never calls for pretension–but i have so much trouble telling what about these photos i love. There is a a sheep and a dog meeting in a field in the middle of winter–and the white snow, the tan dog and the grey sheep have a tonal perfection. There are two work jumpers are hung on acid green lockers, and the accidental symmetry amuses me . There are photos of artists studios that give me comfort, their casual chaos matches mine. There are the hay bales and grass fields that look like Alberta. The transatlantic hand job that might be a pun, the two wieners in a pot that look like a metaphor for love…i don’t know… they all come into me in a place that is not abstracted by galleries or high art notions or low art slumming