Wolfgang Tillmans: Sound is Liquid

mumok host the exhibition “Sound Is Liquid” by Wolfgang Tillmans that features early photographs produced in the pop-culture milieu of the 1990s along with abstract images, high-resolution photographs of the globalized and digitalized reality of the early 21st century, and photos taken shortly before and during the coronavirus pandemic. The two-channel video installation “Book for Architects” will also be on view, as well as a number of recent music recordings and videos. Tillman’s recently released debut album “Moon in Earthlight” will also be presented in a sound-video installation in the exhibition space.

Closely observing people, their relationships, and their connection to the things all around them is of central importance to Tillmans’s work. Our interpersonal relations and modes of perceiving bodies, images, materials, and surfaces are currently undergoing far-reaching changes as our everyday lives are increasingly relocated into virtual space. This restructuring of space and the accompanying media developments are also affecting the status of photography and its relationship to materiality and visuality.

Tillmans’s works on view at mumok deal with social, technological, and media transformation as well as undertaking a pointed examination of forms of presentation and perception in the museum space.