Few artists have shaped the scope of contemporary art and influenced younger generations more than Wolfgang Tillmans. In a career spanning almost four decades, he has consistently redefined the medium of photography through a seamless integration of genres, subjects, techniques, and exhibition strategies. His inventive practice pairs intimacy and playfulness with a commitment to social awareness and a persistent questioning of existing values and hierarchies. Guided by a profound sense of curiosity and care towards his subjects, Tillmans seeks to expand the poetic possibilities of the medium while addressing the fundamental question of what it means to create pictures in an increasingly image-saturated world.

Born in 1968 in Remscheid, Germany, Wolfgang Tillmans studied at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design in Bournemouth, England, from 1990 to 1992. In 2000, Tillmans was the first photographer and first non-British artist to receive the Turner Prize, an award given annually by Tate in London. From 2003 to 2009, Tillmans served as a professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. In 2009, he was selected to serve as an artist trustee on the board of Tate. He has been a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, since 2012 and was appointed a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2013. Tillmans was the recipient of the 2015 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography and in January 2018, he was awarded the Kaiserring (Emperor’s Ring) prize from the city of Goslar in Germany. Tillmans was named one of the TIME100 Most Influential People of 2023.

The artist joined David Zwirner in 2014, and PCR marked his inaugural exhibition with the gallery in New York the following year. In 2018, his work was the subject of two solo exhibitions at the gallery’s Hong Kong and New York locations. His forthcoming solo exhibition, Fold Me, will be presented in September 2023 at David Zwirner, New York.

Since the early 1990s, Tillmans’s work has been the subject of prominent solo exhibitions at international institutions, including Tate Britain (2003); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2006); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2006), which traveled to Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2006–2007), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2007), and Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2008); Serpentine Gallery, London (2010), which traveled to venues in South America including Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia, Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru, and Museo de Artes Visuales, Santiago, Chile; Kunsthalle Zürich (2012), which traveled to Les Rencontres d’Arles, France (2013); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2013); and The National Museum of Art, Osaka (2015). Also in 2015, Book for Architects, a two-channel video installation, was on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In 2016, a solo show of the artist’s work was hosted by Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal.

In 2017, the Tate Modern, London, held a major survey of Tillmans’s work. The artist also presented a new immersive installation featuring his work in music and video in the South Tank at the museum. Later that year, solo shows of Tillmans’s work were on view at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, marking the institution’s first comprehensive examination of photography as a medium, as well as at the Kunstverein in Hamburg.

Fragile, a major solo exhibition of the artist’s work, opened in 2018 at the Musée d’Art Contemporain et Multimédias in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, organized by Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart, Germany, and traveled throughout Africa, with its last stop at Art Twenty One and Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos, Nigeria. Qu’est-ce qui est différent? was presented at Carré d'Art - Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes, France, in 2018. Rebuilding the Future was on view at Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, in 2018–2019. The exhibition Today Is The First Day was presented at WIELS, Brussels, in 2020. Sound is Liquid was on view at the Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, in 2022.

A major traveling exhibition of Tillmans’s work, To look without fear, opened at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in September 2022, and subsequently traveled to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, in April 2023. The presentation will go on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in November 2023.

The artist has operated the nonprofit exhibition space Between Bridges since 2006. Located in London until 2011, Between Bridges has exhibited a range of work by artists, including David Wojnarowicz, Ull Hohn, Charlotte Posenenske, and Charles Henri Ford. In January 2014, it reopened in Berlin with a solo show of work by Patrick Caulfield.

Tillmans considers the printed page to be an important venue for his work. He is deeply involved in the publication of artist books and monographs, and regularly contributes to magazines. Publications that have been designed and edited by the artist include manual (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2007); Lighter (Hatje Cantz, 2008); Abstract Pictures (Hatje Cantz, 2011); FESPA Digital / FRUIT LOGISTICA (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2012); Neue Welt (Taschen, 2012); The Cars (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2015); What Is Different? (Sternberg Press, 2018); and four books (Taschen, 2020); amongst others. In 2019, the artist guest edited Aperture’s “Spirituality” issue.

In recent years, Tillmans has been more directly involved in political activism. In tandem with his ongoing Truth Study Center project (begun in 2005), he has created posters for the anti-Brexit campaign in Britain and in response to right-wing populism in Germany.

Work by the artist is held in museum collections worldwide. Tillmans lives and works in Berlin and London.