August 2002

Editor: So here we have Wolfgang Tillmans's "August," created in 2002 – a photograph. My first impression is one of quiet stillness. The composition feels so deliberately casual, a summer still life that is both ordinary and slightly…off. What jumps out at you when you look at this piece? Curator: Ah, Tillmans. He captures a slice of life, doesn’t he? A moment suspended, as you say, both quotidian and… other. For me, it's the unexpected colours and textures. The grey concrete against the vibrant blues of what look like dyed eggs or plums; that hazy condensation on the upturned glass… almost as if it's a deconstructed, post-digital Dutch still life. What do you make of the tension between the artificiality and the 'real'? Editor: That contrast really sings now that you point it out! It feels so staged, almost, with those strangely coloured objects. But then, the setting— that weathered surface—suggests otherwise. Do you think he's making a comment on artificiality versus nature, or something more intimate? Curator: I think with Tillmans, it’s always deeply personal *and* socially engaged, isn’t it? It reminds me a bit of some of the earlier *Vanitas* paintings in the Netherlands and Flanders; like a symbolic meditation of simple objects on themes such as transience, temporality, and time itself. Here the dye may hint at a subtle tension between the natural and constructed. I think it invites us to pause, to really *see* the beauty and fragility in the everyday… to ponder those summer days and our human fingerprint on them. What do you think, feeling a shift? Editor: I definitely do. Initially, I just saw a somewhat strange composition. But now, looking at it as a meditation on time, as well as the constructed world around us, gives it a whole new weight. Thank you! Curator: And thank *you* for lending me your fresh perspective. Sometimes all it takes is another pair of eyes to truly see.