If this is strong stuff now, consider how a text this
rhetorical, how such a fearsome and poetical delineation of the outlaw's
position must have hit those who saw it 15 years ago, close to
Wojnarowicz's own death. "I get passionate reactions from a few people
when I mention Wojnarowicz," Tillmans says. "In the late 1990s, I was
obsessed by his writings. I was in Los Angeles in 1990 and I saw him in Rosa
von Praunheim's movie [Silence
= Death]. He had such a powerful presence. His monologues left an
indelible impression on me. I've always been intrigued by Wojnarowicz -
he's always been a latent interest… When I thought about making this
space, it became clear to me that David Wojnarowicz would be someone who'd
fit my bill."
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Robert Mapplethorpe, Cross, from "Für
Joseph Beuys", 1986
Deutsche
Bank Collection
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Tillmas, who was beginning to visit and live in New York in
the 1990s, was there at a time when a generation of voices - Robert
Mapplethorpe, Felix
Gonzalez-Torres, Keith Haring -
were being felled by AIDS. It was a period when personal grief, political
activity, and righteous anger intermixed. In an interview
given to artist and writer Peter
Halley three years ago, Tillmans spoke of that time - a time when he
met "the love of [his] life, Jochen
Klein, another German artist who had moved there."
|
|
Wolfgang Tillmans, Weihnachtsstern,
2003
Deutsche Bank
Collection© Wolfgang Tillmans
|
"All my work has been made with the knowledge of possible death, because
since 1983 I've had an acute awareness that this disease, AIDS, affects
me," Tillmans told Halley. "In 1985, after my first few sexual encounters,
when I was 17, I had this big AIDS fear. That's actually crazy, when you
think of a 17 year-old schoolboy lying in bed thinking he's going to die."
Klein died in 1997 from an AIDS-related illness.
Tillmans does see
similarities between that dark period and today, and delivers a warning
against complacency. "We are exactly [in the same place] now, but maybe
the art world is has such prosperity that there is a strange detachment
from the political world."
There's a pause. "Ah, you see, I've
given you a little interview after all."
David Wojnarowicz (20
April to 4 June 2006) at Between Bridges, London, E2 (020 7729 8599).
Rimbaud
in New York (21 April to 20 May) at Cabinet, London, EC1 (020 7251 6114).
[1]
[2]
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