Wolfgang Tillmans in Paris
From the 13th of June to the 22nd of September the German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans has taken over the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The Pompidou is closing for renovations (it will reopen in 2030) and Tillmans has transformed level 2 in the Bibliothèque Publique d’information (Bpi) by installing a 35 year retrospective of his photography that includes music, sound, words and moving images, as well as contributions from performance artists. The name of the exhibition, “Nothing could have prepared us – Everything could have prepared us”, is a familiar construction for an artist who has said that if one thing is worth photographing, then everything is worth photographing. Tillmans has brought his generous maximalist sensibility to the Pompidou to realize an unprecedented exhibition.
The Bibliothèque Publique d’information (Bpi) is 6000 square meters and to fill it he has turned his photographic practice into a Borgesian world; his version is not the universe as a vast library space as it was for Borges, but a universe for the range of how he has used photography. The project has been three years in the planning and from the beginning he set out to “get care into every corner of the library’s 6000 meters”.
As a recognition of his careful architectural occupation of the Pompidou’s library, Border Crossings is pleased to offer the entire interview we did with Wolfgang Tillmans in July of 2022 when “To look without fear”, his exhibition mounted by MoMA in New York, was about to open at the AGO in Toronto.
