Before the Centre Pompidou closes for five years, artist Wolfgang Tillmans is taking over the 5,000 square meters of the Public Information Library with a major solo exhibition. A place of knowledge and memory, it gives him the opportunity to delve into his own and create a dialogue between older works and new projects. Interview.
Numéro art: This summer, you're featuring in the Centre Pompidou's last solo exhibition before its five-year closure. You're taking over an iconic space: the Bibliothèque publique d'information, emptied of its 430,000 documents. How did you approach this ambitious project? Wolfgang Tillmans: For each exhibition, my starting point is generally the physical space in which I'll be presenting my work: the institution, the city, and my history with it... Then, I'm interested in the public, both local and traveling, who will come to visit. Finally, I'm interested in the place of this exhibition in my career, in relation to the years that precede and follow. In this case, my last exhibition in Paris dates back to 2002, at the Palais de Tokyo, so now twenty-three years ago.