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Lot Essay
Evocative, intimate and sexually charged, the fifteen black and white square portrait photographs that comprise Chemistry Squares form one of Wolfgang Tillmans' most seminal series. With other works from the edition existing in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, these carefully composed details encapsulate the innovative images of young people set within their social environment that launched Tillmans onto the international art scene in the early 1990s. Details of sweaty, euphoric bodies photographed at a disarmingly close range, this heterogeneous imagery emanates vitality and youth. Imbued with a palpable sense of the moment, these works manage to be both intimate while resonating on a universal level. As Tillmans has said, 'The viewer should be encouraged to feel close to their own experiences of situations similar to those that I've present to them in my work. They should enter my work through their own eyes, and their own lives - not through trying to piece together mine.' (W. Tillmans, quoted in J. Verwoert et. al (eds.), Wolfgang Tillmans, London 2002, p. 33).
Dating from 1992, Chemistry Squares assumes an important position in the development of Tillmans' career. It was included in his first exhibition at Daniel Buchholz (and Buchholz & Buchholz antiquarian bookshop) in Cologne in 1993. Invited to exhibit on the strength of his innovative photography for i-D magazine, this exhibition, staged in the two venues at the same time, was significant because it was here that Tillmans has said that he 'found my signature in terms of showing my pictures in a non-hierarchal way. It was a very radical thing at the time, to show magazine pages alongside original photographs and to leave the photographs unframed; not to make a distinction in terms of value - you know, what belongs on the wall, what doesn't. It was very much an installation. One wall was very sparse, with a series of pictures in one straight line, the Chemistry Squares (1992).'
This relationship with how the work is displayed has remained fundamental to Tillmans' practice. Intrigued by the tension that is inherent to the photograph, which holds both the promise of something perfect and highly controlled contained within a vulnerable material form, Tillmans has since decided to embrace this fragility as part of the visual experience. 'The fact that photographs aren't permanent is like a reminder of our condition, showing their vulnerability protects one from the disappointment of seeing them fadeI've made all of that part of the beauty of the visual experience.' (W. Tillmans, quoted in J. Verwoert et. al (eds.), Wolfgang Tillmans, London 2002, p. 33).
Dating from 1992, Chemistry Squares assumes an important position in the development of Tillmans' career. It was included in his first exhibition at Daniel Buchholz (and Buchholz & Buchholz antiquarian bookshop) in Cologne in 1993. Invited to exhibit on the strength of his innovative photography for i-D magazine, this exhibition, staged in the two venues at the same time, was significant because it was here that Tillmans has said that he 'found my signature in terms of showing my pictures in a non-hierarchal way. It was a very radical thing at the time, to show magazine pages alongside original photographs and to leave the photographs unframed; not to make a distinction in terms of value - you know, what belongs on the wall, what doesn't. It was very much an installation. One wall was very sparse, with a series of pictures in one straight line, the Chemistry Squares (1992).'
This relationship with how the work is displayed has remained fundamental to Tillmans' practice. Intrigued by the tension that is inherent to the photograph, which holds both the promise of something perfect and highly controlled contained within a vulnerable material form, Tillmans has since decided to embrace this fragility as part of the visual experience. 'The fact that photographs aren't permanent is like a reminder of our condition, showing their vulnerability protects one from the disappointment of seeing them fadeI've made all of that part of the beauty of the visual experience.' (W. Tillmans, quoted in J. Verwoert et. al (eds.), Wolfgang Tillmans, London 2002, p. 33).