Wolfgang Tillmans: What’s wrong with redistribution?

On the occasion of the bestowal of the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography upon Wolfgang Tillmans on 30/11/2015 his latest book “What’s wrong with redistribution?” will be published by the Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König.

Since Wolfgang Tillmans first exhibited his multi-part installation on tables with the title truth study centre ten years ago, this group of works has become an integral component of his exhibitions. Frequently rooted in the local conditions and the period of their inception, these collages composed of texts, images and objects seek to gain a clear perspective on our increasingly complex age.

The question of redistribution – in the case of the table works formally addressed through the transfer of found materials to new contexts – also plays an important role for Tillmans in the majority of his other truth study centre installations: "asking this question kind of innocently, may remind oneself that the specific way something is distributed today, is not done so by following a law of nature, but by a complex set of moral and political choices", states Tillmans.

The scope and complexity of this long-term project will be revealed for the first time with the book presentation and with the parallel exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof: From 28/11/2015 the largest of the installations within this series of Tillmans’s works to date – truth study centre 2007/2008 – will be exhibited at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin within the context of the exhibition A Few Free Years: From Absalon to Zobernig – Endowments from Friedrich Christian Flick to the Nationalgalerie.

Book presentation

Wolfgang Tillmans: What’s wrong with redistribution

Evening lecture

Thomas McDonough: The Ethics of Not-Knowing – Wolfgang Tillmans’s truth study centre

In his lecture, Thomas McDonough will present Tillmans’s project in the context of the photography of New Objectivity, collage techniques from Hannah Höch to Robert Rauschenberg and concept art, thus exploring the political dimensions of his work.

Thomas McDonough is professor for comparative literature at Birmingham University, New York, and regularly publishes articles on contemporary art in magazines such as Afterall, Artforum and OSMOS.

Discussion

In a concluding discussion, Wolfgang Tillmans and Bernd Scherer, Director of the HKW, will talk about redistribution, deceptive truths, and idiosyncratic picture politics.

Bar and Music

With DJ KABLAM