Wolfgang Tillmans – 'What Art Does in Me is Beyond Words' | Artist Interview | TateShots

[Music] I'm part of the London influx cuz I never really lived here before in ten years ago I rented the place and then five years ago I moved the entire studio to here because there wasn't anywhere in London I could actually rent at any affordable rate and quality and I was like raining through the roof and the heating was broken and the landlord wouldn't look after it it's that bad deal you get with British landlords that is really driving our challenge I guess one shouldn't forget like there's a lot of praise for the special situation in Berlin a lot of it has its roots in you know terrible history Nazi Germany aggression that rightly calls the Allies to bombed it is so much space that people could grow into in the last 25 years because there are things that are good urban planning here but a lot of urban planning we don't want to be repeated it happened here like form you know a walls and iron curtains here we are now in a space where I have architectural models of the exhibitions I'm working on and so here is the Tate Modern show I'm almost ready to go and I I work working models so that I can plan what to take with me but over the years and the model has become actually such a fluid way of working for me than it actually is often getting quite close to the finish exhibition a picture that also in the third room of the exhibition is called jury's in I never took this as a mockery because you know that's what we mean we were whole you know some people design a room like this and other design it like that you know that the reality you know like there are many many solutions but out of this ugliness somehow an interesting composition came that speaks kind of about the badness but also the humanity in in it you I mean there are days and in the studio and they is not spent in the studio and often based in the studio are a lot of communication discussing emails discussing print colors discussing compositions of exhibitions or contributions to group exhibitions like requests from all over the place really you know I would sometimes like to think of this just aside subject and that's not really important and encounter at least just deal with the work but in fact all of that is part of my work really my day-to-day life in the studio whilst the assistants are here is about taking care of a quarter century's worth of work and how it functions and operates in the outside world I mean a great deal of what I do is prints how the image manifests itself on paper and a great deal of care and initial research has gone into it an ongoing research of how this object that meets the eye is made but the prints could never have been the way that they have been in the last six years or so no there is an infinite amount of detail in an infinite richness almost of color which is impossible to reproduce in a book there's no screen that can record use it and that makes actually working in the studio with these works really quite special because it is literally a discovery you know you see things that that you didn't see before there's not not one not one correct way of reading my work I sometimes say that if you have encounter with 5% of my work in an exhibition where you get a sense often I know how that smells I know how that sounds or I've seen this before you know I understand this I can feel like this that's kind of really what I would say success in my work what art does in me is also beyond words it's something that that either resonates so it doesn't but you know that it could only be this way in no other way and that's of course the same with music you know perfect piece of music a song you know that is the recording and that's how how it should be there is not the question of an alternative I mean many ways music is always a ninja in at the heart of my work and that means to be in the here and now as long as I stay interested in the world around me will I be able to I think respond however weird and dangerous it seems today as long as I'm interested I think I will make work they cross the knife [Music] eight times 30

Channel: Tate

Views: 170,658

Keywords: Tate, tate modern, tillmans, wolfgang tillmans, wolfgang tillmans 2017, art, modern art, berlin, studio, photography, photographer, contemporary art, turner prize, portraits, landscape, abstract art

Id: aYIXGdoTwWA

Length: 6min 8sec (368 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 27 2017