Trash to Treasure

f you were expecting Eurotrash at Wolfgang Tillmans: still life, then you may be shocked instead to find Europeans’ trash, as well as New Yorkers’ orange peels, abandoned shirts and a few seemingly lost souls. Tillmans, photographer extraordinaire and winner of the 2000 Turner Prize, has danced within the art and advertising worlds (simultaneously) while taking pictures of everyone from his punky friends to Rem Koolhaas and other culture-starlets. His first solo exhibition at an American museum opened last Friday at the Busch-Reisinger Museum and runs through Feb. 23, 2003.

The exhibition, curated by History of Art and Architecture Ph. D. candidate Benjamin Paul, centers on a number of “still life” photographs taken in the last ten years, but transcends the limitations of that genre as it was defined by 17th-century Dutch painting. Paul has curated a wide-ranging, sometimes free-wheeling show that questions what we define as a still life by juxtaposing photographs of human subjects and other miscellany with more typical assemblies of fruit, vegetables and other gustatory staples.

Those foodstuffs, and even the shirts and footsteps, seem far from the work Tillmans is really known for: photographs of his friends and their decadent, self-destructive lives. Luscious pomegranates, the bright colors of tomatoes and oranges, even the morning light present in nearly every image are far from the sadness that pervades many of those photographs not included in this show, such as Jochen taking a bath (1997), which shows Tillmans’ lover just before his death from AIDS. Indeed, new LA still life (2001), located on the back wall of the exhibition space, is almost comical, as a pineapple hovers above clear rock candy, fruits and vegetables.

Critics often suggest that these photographs increase viewers’ awareness of the banal objects we confront on a daily basis. As Paul states on the wall text, “these idiosyncratic scenes not only allow us to see such everyday objects afresh but also draw our attention to the relation between objects and their users.” These images do not exist simply to give us a greater understanding of the importance of orange peels or pomegranate skins. Viewed in the context of his portraits, one begins to see that these disposable items are the traces left behind by that same group of have-fun-now-deal-with-the-consequences-later friends. For someone whose life is as tinged with sadness as Tillmans’, the poignancy of such banal objects is made apparent, with the vivid color and inherent beauty of them simply a vehicle for grabbing our attention.

For example, a stained shirt in any other context falls by the wayside, more or less. But in Sportflecken (1996), a white shirt with light yellow stains begins to raise questions. Why is it stained? Whose shirt is it? The object itself is boring and dormant, but the truth lies in the details. It may have belonged to a deceased lover, or maybe not; one often wonders if Wolfgang Tillmans’ images are authentic or posed in such a way that they look authentic. It doesn’t seem to matter, however, as these objects represent details of anyone’s life. Whether or not we come away with a greater appreciation for fruit or beer bottles, we do begin to understand that these objects are signifiers for something deeper.

A Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition is rarely hung without the artist involved, as he likes to decide where his unframed images will be tacked onto the wall, what they will be juxtaposed with, across from, and near. For someone who takes photographs of everything from flying running shorts to Kate Moss, presentation is key to understanding the work. The narrative provided when the artist’s hand is involved in placement provides access to the deeper, but more abstract, meaning.

Paul’s decision to hang the show himself, not presenting images in clusters but spreading them out across a single room and wall in simple, white frames, changes the dynamic of the work considerably. It is harder to penetrate the shell of the photographs, to escape their inherent formalism, and in certain instances it is hard to understand why the curator chose the images he did. Roadworks (1995), for example, with its outdoor setting and vast scale, never fully found its legs in this exhibition. When the orderly method of presentation is abandoned, as when two photographs are displayed on top of each other or without frames, it seems either too self-conscious or slightly cramped. The photographs themselves, laid-back and often cropped with irregular white borders, seem to be trying to get out of the constricting frames, even curling within some of them, which provided an unneeded distraction.

Still, the show is impressive, if not for its presentation, then for the majority of the images chosen and the work itself. Tillmans adapts the still life—poignant, pointed and even beautiful—as something more appropriate to contemporary society. Objects are significant to Tillmans as traces of his past and we are reminded that they hold a parallel importance in our own lives.