“History is now, and what we do now is the history of tomorrow,” Wolfgang Tillmans said at the press preview of Keep Movin’, his new exhibition at Regen Projects through March 1, 2026. Tillmans, who is tall, blond, and speaks softly with more of the affect of a grad student than an artist, described his works as “evolutions not revolutions,” explaining that whenever he has a new idea, a few days later, he often realizes it is something that he first explored ten or twenty years before. Following his Pompidou Center exhibition last summer, Tillmans sought to bring to Los Angeles a diversity of new works and ongoing series, including framed and unframed work, figurative and abstract artworks, photos, sculptures, video, collage installations, and found objects. “The relation between photography and objects and sculpture is at the heart of what I do because, in the end, I live in a three-dimensional world,” Tillmans said.
Wolfgang Tillmans, Lagoon still life, 2022 Inkjet print on paper Framed Dimensions: 17 1/2 x 13 1/2 x 7/8 inches (44.5 x 34.3 x 2.2 cm) Paper Dimensions: 16 x 12 inches (40.6 x 30.5 cm) Edition of 10, 1 AP WT 1945, courtesy the artist and Regen Projects.
Keep Movin’ is Tillmans’ ninth solo show at Regen Projects and his tenth in Los Angeles (He had a show at the Hammer in 2006). Some of the large, unframed abstract works were made on a photocopier scanner bed by placing compressed rolls of paper which Tillmans said, “have a rhythmic almost musical tension for me.” Tillmans explained that for the first decade of his practice, he made unframed work and insisted that his collectors display his work unframed. Tillmans didn’t do so, he said, as a gesture to 1990s grunge. Instead, Tillmans explained that “it was purity for me. The beauty of the sheet of paper as it came out of the photocopier or out of the photo processor, that object was perfect for me.” Tillmans gave his collectors the original photograph and a certificate allowing them to remake the work should the original fall into disrepair over time. However, after years of doing so, Tillmans came to feel that unframed work was what was expected of him. He never had an objection to frames. “They protect the work,” he acknowledged. So, he began making framed works, some of which have a sculptural three-dimensional aspect due to folds and bends in the paper – however, those can not be remade.
Wolfgang Tillmans, Winter Morning Sun, 2023 Inkjet print on paper Framed Dimensions: 13 3/8 x 17 3/8 x 7/8 inches (34 x 44.1 x 2.2 cm) Paper Dimensions: 12 x 16 inches (30.5 x 40.6 cm) Edition of 10, 1 AP WT 1948, image courtesy the artist and Regen Projects
Tillman sees no contradiction between the two. “I see a reality of life that there’s not only one way of doing things,” he said at the press preview. “I don’t follow just one line and one practice. I don’t work seriously on one [series} and then the next… Everything is interwoven and layered [in such a way as to] to represent the complexity of life as I see it.”
Tillmans noted that last year was the 20th anniversary of his ongoing installation of table-top collages of found images, called Truth Study Center, begun in 2005 before anyone talked about being in a Post-Truth era.
At the beginning of the 21st century, Tillmans said, he was struck by the realization that men (and it was almost always men) often claimed absolute truth, whether they were religious fundamentalists who claimed evolution did not exist, or politicians claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or health fanatics at the South African Ministry of Healthclaiming that HIV is not the cause of AIDs. “I made collages on tabletops because I felt language was better to speak about these things than art.”
The tabletop collages evolved to include observations about how we observe, mapping eye function and perception. Other table tops address history and the passage of time. At 25, Tillmans wrote an essay rejecting the chronological. However, Tillmans said, laughing, that by age 57, having recorded 30 or 40 years of time, “it’s difficult to claim to be only in the moment.”
Wolfgang Tillmans, Wuppertaler Schwebebahn, 2025 Inkjet print on paper mounted on aluminum in artist’s frame 26 5/8 x 34 3/4 x 1 1/4 inches (67.5 x 88.4 x 3.2 cm) Edition of 3, 1 AP WT 1974, Image courtesy the artist and Regen Projects.
The table tops even include material Tillmans collected as he was in California installing the show, including a photograph of a woman in Pasadena alerting citizens about what to do if they see ICE agents. Tillmans wondered if twenty years ago anyone would have even known what ICE was.
Tillmans explained that he had first come across the heavy braided rope that is installed as part of the exhibition on a beach in Fire Island. He discovered that it was used to tow ships and could bear up to 70,000 pounds. He also saw these metal loops which were used to move large blocks of concrete. “So, I brought those as well into the space.” He was so involved with them as objects that he chose not to photograph them. The gallery press release describes these items as invoking “images of cohesion and resilience.”
Wolfgang Tillmans, Speech Bubble, 2025 Inkjet print on paper, clips 54 3/8 x 81 1/8 inches (138 x 206 cm) Edition of 1, 1 AP WT 1967, Image courtesy the artist and Regen Projects.
There are also photos taken at a metalworks in Remscheid, the city where Tillmans was born, that speak to his longtime interest in materiality and industrial process as well as exploring issues of home, change, and wonder at large industry.
In one corner of the exhibition is a series of 48 dark photographs arranged in rows that Tillmans describes as “a memorial for the victims of organized religions.” As you stare closely at what at first looks like photographic paper turned black – you begin to notice differences – some are not black at all but instead the darkest blue. There are cracks and bubbles caused by the moisture in the air. In some we see our own reflection, while those in the corner reflect endlessly each other. The images also provoke an optical illusion of seeing white lines and black dots, which to Tillmans, chip at “the absoluteness of religious claims.”
As mentioned earlier, Keep Movin’ features a multiplicity of works and series Tillmans has pursued over the years: there are photos of rivers he has taken between 1997 and 2024, as well as portraits taken over the years.
There is a gorgeous large print of the night sky and stars that is part of a series of photos Tillmans has taken from planes using a high-resolution digital camera. Tillmans’ first love as a child was astronomy, and he spoke about a recent invitation to the Mt. Wilson Observatory to see their meticulous archive of images that are a record of the passage of time and the minute changes in the sky and the stars.
Tillmans’ wide-ranging curiosity and resulting explorations in how we see, and how things change over time, explored in two and three dimensions, in images framed and unframed, new and revisited, in table-top collages, in short films, and even in the materiality of objects as seen at Regen Projects is like one unique artwork.
Keep Movin’ is a meditation on Tillman’s present consciousness – captured for a moment and for always.
Cover image: Wolfgang Tillmans, Faroe Islands Landscape and Clouds, 2015, Inkjet print on paper, clips, 54 3/8 x 81 1/8 inches (138 x 206 cm), Edition of 1, 1 AP, WT 1938; all images courtesy the artist and Regen Projects.
