The Wick List

Viewing Wolfgang Tillmans: Nothing could have prepared us at Centre Pompidou

The Wick Culture - Echo Beach, 2017 Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, Maureen Paley, London, David Zwirner, New York

Above Echo Beach, 2017 Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, Maureen Paley, London, David Zwirner, New York

The Wick Culture - its only love give it away, 2005 Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, Maureen Paley, London, David Zwirner, New York

Above its only love give it away, 2005 Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, Maureen Paley, London, David Zwirner, New York

The Wick Culture - Moon in Earthlight, 2015 Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, Maureen Paley, London, David Zwirner, New York

Above Moon in Earthlight, 2015 Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, Maureen Paley, London, David Zwirner, New York

The Wick Culture - Wolfgang Tillmans. Courtesy Jens Ziehe

Above Wolfgang Tillmans. Courtesy Jens Ziehe

Above Echo Beach, 2017 Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, Maureen Paley, London, David Zwirner, New York

Above its only love give it away, 2005 Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, Maureen Paley, London, David Zwirner, New York

Above Moon in Earthlight, 2015 Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, Maureen Paley, London, David Zwirner, New York

Above Wolfgang Tillmans. Courtesy Jens Ziehe

Wolfgang Tillmans: Nothing could have prepared us

Centre Pompidou
13 June – 22 September, 2025

Worth hopping on the Eurostar for is this unmissable blockbuster of a show – the final exhibition at the current Centre Pompidou before it closes its doors for a major renovation in September – it is due to re-open to the public in 2030. The programme for this chapter of the experimental, innovative arts hub in French capital goes out with a memorable bang with a huge, 6,000 metre square show of Wolfgang Tillmans.

Conceived as an installation and curatorial experiment, Tillmans forges a conversation between his work and the now empty library space on level two, probing at the way knowledge is held – and by whom. The show ‘Nothing could have prepared us – everything could have prepared us’ extends as a kind of retrospective, spanning more than thirty-five years of work, following on from Tillmans’ acclaimed retrospectives at Tate Modern in 2017 and at MoMA in 2022. This is the first show of this scale in Paris since 2002, when Tillmans showed at the Palais de Tokyo.

As the show’s title suggests, the works abounds in contrasts and contradictions, something Tillmans has always revelled in, moving in close and working from a distance, creating constellations that pit the universal and the epic against the intimate and personal. The exhibition also moves another important issue in Tillmans work along – how we display and digest information in the contemporary age, and who benefits from it.