Wolfgang Tillmans: Nothing could have prepared us – Everything could have prepared us
Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
13 June – September 22, 2025
The Centre Pompidou gives carte blanche to German artist Wolfgang Tillmans, who has come up with an original project to round off the program at the Paris building before a five-year renovation. Tillmans takes over 65.000 sqft of level 2 of the Bibliothèque publique d'information (Bpi) and transforms the space that brings his work into dialogue with the library, conceived both as architecture and as a place for the transmission of knowledge.
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 categorization. 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.
