The show: Wolfgang Tillmans. So, a few weeks ago I wrote an even more crap than usual blog about a really rather good photography exhibition I had seen at the Tate Modern. Somewhat, I suspect, to many peoples dismay and consternation I vocalised my belief, which still stands, that almost any photograph can look 'good' if blown up, framed well, and put on the wall of a gallery. Obviously anyone who knows about photography (unlike me clearly) will disagree with this, which is fine, but they must surely agree that Wolfgang Tillmans has made a career out of doing just that, in the best best possible way. I mean his entire canon seems to be about making things look good by hanging them in certain, differing ways, or at least that’s what they seemed to think in the little booklet that came with the exhibition. His work is all about placing random, lets face it in many cases pretty damn standard pictures on walls in different interesting ways and seeing what happens. Pieces from different times in his career (apparently - I didn’t read the labels) are juxtaposed, creating interesting cross references and associations, changing the meaning of pieces from the way they would have been viewed in different settings. I like this idea a lot, and I liked SOME of the images, but a hell of a lot of them were a load of crap, I mean I get the latent romanticism of the domestic and all that but a lot of these were either boring, badly realised, or, well, boring. That’s fine though I enjoyed it mostly for the over arcing concept anyway.
I like the site-specific nature of his work and also the way he articulates my personally experience of moving through a gallery space. This is particularly strong when in galleries which I know well, with pieces I have studied or really love; they are all like old friends who you are meeting briefly in a crowd, or like having a conversation you have had over and over again but changes constantly and never gets boring. Each piece speaks to the others, saying different things depending on what you look at, in what order, at what time, depending on where they are placed in relation to each other – etc, I love that!!
Anyway, enough of all that gush. One thing I will say for the guy is that he really bought the best out of the space. I can’t remember the last time the Serpentine looked so fab. The last few shows I remember seeing there (obviously not going that often) have really closed up the space, all dark rooms for video projections or stuffy small spaces filled with felt (although that may have been a dream). Anyway, the place looked bloody awesome and about 3 times the usual size - it was all light and airy and lovely and the whole experience was totally summery and delightful.
There was quite a lot of stuff which no doubt 'challenged our perception of photography as a medium, or object’, or whatever. To be honest I thought this stuff was all as dull as dull could be but could see the appeal if you like that sort of thing or were employed to write essays on such things but was not much fun for me as an experience. I guess he was playing with the idea of the photograph as an object as well as a canvas-like space – creating photographic 3-D sculptures by bending and folding photos so they exist in different planes of space, both physically and theoretically – or whatever. Once again he is using the display as part of the work – placing the images in glass cases which somewhat fetishise them. I do like the way he clearly plays around to get different effects though, stretching the traditional processes to create new types of images, obvious may be a word that springs to mind personally but there we go:
One room, which looked out onto the park rather beautifully, had some lovely painterly pieces which were all swirly and pretty-pretty and enjoyable by anyone on earth. I’m not knocking that, but I have to say that there was definitely something a tad saccharine about them:
Anyway, have to say don’t remember much else from the show, was pretty out of it, but enjoyed it for the overarching experience as opposed to most of the photographs – but I really really think that’s the point of it anyway so it’s fine.
On the way to the gallery/my picnic spot I did incidentally find ANOTHER Watts monument – he must have filled London with various weird things which is bloody great news and may lead to a new weekly, or as frequent as possible, section of my blog called Watts Spots. This week it was the monument to Physical Energy (below) which was really rather good I thought. For one thing it was facing the Albert Memorial and yet covering his eyes – as if he was protecting himself from the glare of all that hideous (yet fab) bloody gold. It was also perfect timing as the sun was directly in front and the hand was casting shade exactly over the eyes of the statue so it looked pretty good! According to the internet this is Watts’s moist ambitious sculpture and there are versions in Cape Town and somewhere else which is important for some reason. I don’t know but it feels pretty dynamic and worth a slight detour if you haven’t seen it before. What Watts will it be next week I wonder?
