AutoWerke II: Contemporary Photography on and off the road

by Wolfgang Tillmans, Gunter Lorenz, Gillian Wearing

For AutoWork, two teams of curators in the United States and Germany invited internationally renowned artists to work with the BMW group's corporate identity--in the widest sense of the its employees, products, customers, work processes and image, using both photography and film. The artists were granted absolute artistic freedom and complete autonomy. Included among the project's participants in Germany are Heike Baranowsky, Thomas Struth, Rineke Dijkstra, Thomas Demand, Nina Fischer & Maroan El Sani, Candida H fer, Boris Michailov, Johannes Muggenthaler, Ursula Rogg, and Alexander Timtschenko. Included among the project's participants in the US are Sharon Lockhart, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Wolfgang Tillmans, Beat Streuli, Todd Eberle, Glenn Ligon, Catherine Opie, Paul Searight, and Gillian Wearing.

120 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 2001

About the author

Wolfgang Tillmans is an influential contemporary German photographer whose work is in dialogue with artists such as Andreas Gursky and Gerhard Richter. Emerging in the 1990s with his snapshots of teenagers, clubs, and LGBTQ culture, Tillman’s practice has expanded to include diaristic photography, large-scale abstraction, and commissioned magazine work. “I want the pictures to be working in both directions,” the artist has said. “I accept that they speak about me, and yet at the same time, I want and expect them to function in terms of the viewer and their experience.” Capturing landscapes from an airplane window, still lifes of crustaceans, or straightforward portraits, his work conveys the profundity of an encyclopedic archive. Tillmans’ attention to even the most incidental moments can be seen in his Concorde Grid (1997), a group of 56 color photos depicting the airplane taking off along with the surrounding scenes captured during the moments in between.

Born on August 16, 1968 in Remscheid, West Germany, Tillmans spent the early part of his career in London after graduating from the Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design. In 2000, he was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize, marking the first time the prize had been awarded to a photographer or non-British artist. In 2006, Tillmans established Between Bridges, a non-profit exhibition space located in Berlin. His survey show “Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017” opened at the Tate Modern in London to critical acclaim, cementing his stature in the contemporary art world. The artist currently lives and works between Berlin, Germany and London, United Kingdom. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, and the Kunstmuseum Basel, among others.