Espace Louis Vuitton München Presents Wolfgang Tillmans: Passages Silencieux
The Espace Louis Vuitton München is proud to present Passages Silencieux, a profound exhibition dedicated to the work of the renowned German artist Wolfgang Tillmans. This presentation marks a significant new chapter in the Fondation Louis Vuitton's international Hors-les-murs programme, which brings the Foundation's collection to a global audience through its cultural spaces in Tokyo, Venice, Beijing, Seoul, Osaka, and Munich.
A central figure within the Fondation's collection, Tillmans's work was featured in its inaugural exhibition in 2014. Passages Silencieux reaffirms this enduring commitment, building upon the momentum of the artist's major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which concluded in September 2025. Uniquely, the works on display have been personally selected by the artist himself from the Collection, offering an intimate view into his artistic universe.
A Constellation of Images
Wolfgang Tillmans, born in 1968 in Remscheid and now working between Berlin and London, has spent decades expanding the technical and thematic possibilities of photography. Beginning his artistic journey with a photocopier in the late 1980s, he has since become a witness to and a master of the transition from analogue to digital. His early photographs of youth and club culture in the 1990s captured a generation, but his work has continually evolved to encompass a vast range of genres, from portraiture and still life to abstract, camera-less creations.
A defining aspect of Tillmans's practice is his method of presentation. In exhibitions and publications alike, he arranges his photographs in carefully considered "constellations," creating fresh associations and dialogues between images. For Passages Silencieux, the artist has arranged the display across both floors of the Espace, deliberately eschewing a chronological timeline. The selected works, spanning thirty-five years of his career, weave connections across different times, geographies, and atmospheres.
In this curated space, a multifaceted portrait from one decade might converse with a photograph of plants from another, or a still life might sit beside an abstract work from his Einzelgänger series (2003). There is no hierarchy of scale or genre; some works are framed, while others are not. By creating these silent, visual passages between images, Tillmans renews the relevance of each picture for the contemporary viewer, presenting a world that is both intimately personal and collectively shared.
The Materiality of the Image
While his work draws our attention to the world around us, it also consistently reveals the material reality of the photographic medium itself. Tillmans began producing his own prints in the 1990s, and Passages Silencieux highlights his ongoing experimentation. In works like Berlin (2006), he emphasizes materiality by re-photocopying and re-photographing existing prints, sometimes enlarging them to the point where the texture of the paper and the idiosyncrasies of the ink become the subject.
This exploration of photography's essence is most striking in his camera-less abstractions. Created without a negative, these works, such as those in the Einzelgänger series, exist solely through the direct interplay of light and photosensitive paper. For Tillmans, these abstract creations—which he has exhibited alongside his figurative work since 1998—represent not a rupture, but a pause; a moment to contemplate the fundamental building blocks of the medium he has dedicated his life to exploring.
As the artist himself says, the image is “a good starting point for thinking about the world.” Passages Silencieux offers visitors a unique opportunity to embark on that journey of thought, guided by one of the most insightful and influential artists of our time.
Passages Silencieux – Selected Works from the Collection is on view at the Espace Louis Vuitton München. Admission is free of charge.
