Wolfgang Tillmans

The retrospective exhibition explores over thirty-five years of artistic practice across various photographic genres, including portraiture, still life, architecture, documentary images and abstraction. His work is displayed in a wide variety of ways, playing on the verticality of the walls and the horizontality of the tables in a manner which defies any attempt at categorisation. In addition to his photographic work, Tillmans has incorporated moving images, music, sound and words into this extensive installation, together with contributions from performance artists.

In recent years, Wolfgang Tillmans has been the subject of major retrospectives in leading institutions, notably at Tate Modern in London in 2017 and MoMA in New York in 2022. He has also presented a major exhibition entitled ‘Fragile’ which toured the African continent (2018–2022 in Kinshasa, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Addis Ababa, Yaoundé, Accra, Abidjan and Lagos). The exhibition at the Centre Pompidou is his first solo exhibition at an institution in Paris since his ambitious installation at the Palais de Tokyo in 2002. The exhibition is complemented by a catalogue and the publication of an expanded version of Tillmans’ Reader, which has been translated into French. This book is a collection of writings by and interviews with the artist.

Accès libre par Celine

As a main partner of the exhibition, the house of Celine, is colla[1]borating for the first time ever with the Centre Pompidou on the “Accès libre par Celine” initiative: offering select days of free admission to the public. This unique initiative was imagined as an open invitation to all, an opportunity to discover the world of Wolf[1]gang Tillmans and the Centre Pompidou ahead of its imminent closure.

Four days of free access, from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.: June 13, July 3, August 28, and September 22, 2025.