With a sweeping audiovisual and photographic installation across the emptied Bibliothèque Publique d’Information (Bpi), now reimagined as a radical, living artwork, Wolfgang Tillmans’ exhibition Nothing Could Have Prepared Us – Everything Could Have Prepared Us at the Centre Pompidou is an evocative glimpse into a truly magnificent artistic legacy, melding emotional resonance with political urgency.
In the first major institutional monograph in Paris since his 2002 Palais de Tokyo installation, Tillmans presents intimate portraits, still lifes, seascapes, documentary, and abstract images. From early works like Zeitungsjacket (1985) to recent Pompidou CLC photocopies (2024–25), the artist explores the transformation of media and information, as well as the limits of photographic representation in the digital age, examining how technology reshapes our perception of truth, memory, and identity. The exhibition is not arranged chronologically, but layered as in a visual archive or social media feed.
As such, the artist shifts away from a traditional museum display, orchestrating a site-specific installation that transforms the architecture and atmosphere of the library itself into part of the work. Here, library remnants become props – worn-down carpets, signage (“Politique”, “Éducation”, “Philosophie”), computer booths, photocopy rooms – all remain scattered, contributing to the exhibition’s unique theatricality. Photographs, video, sound, text, and performance interact with the space’s vertical walls and horizontal tables, defying categorisation and inviting free navigation.
As the Centre Pompidou is about to close for five years of renovation, this exhibition is both a farewell and a reflection – a celebration of freedom, openness, and visual democracy. But it is also more than a retrospective – it’s a poetic battlefield of image, memory, and architecture. By inhabiting this specific space, Tillmans invites viewers to rethink how images inform our sense of past, present, and collective identity.
Amid a world grappling with media saturation, fading freedoms, and digital disconnection, the exhibition stands as a plea: that through observation, empathy, and creative resistance, we can reclaim fragmented knowledge – and maybe even rebuild our shared humanity.
Wolfgang Tillmans (born 1968 in Remscheid, Germany) is an internationally acclaimed artist whose work spans photography, video, sound, installation, and publishing. Emerging in the early 1990s with intimate portraits, club culture images, and political reportage, he became the first non-British artist – and first photographer – to win the Turner Prize in 2000. His practice blurs the boundaries between genres, moving fluidly from still life to abstraction, from documentary to pure experimentation, often presented in unconventional, spatially responsive installations. Deeply engaged with questions of perception, media, democracy, and community, Tillmans has exhibited at leading institutions worldwide, including the Tate Modern (2017) and MoMA (2022), and staged the multi-year African touring exhibition Fragile (2018–2022). Through his art and activism, he has become one of the most influential voices in contemporary visual culture.
Wolfgang Tillmans: Nothing Could Have Prepared Us – Everything Could Have Prepared Us
June 13 – September 22, 2025
Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
