Wolfgang Tillmans

How to begin nailing a photographic oeuvre whose cast of characters ranges from Kate Moss (radiant in Alexander McQueen) to a brown rat (rapine in a gutter), whose still-life subjects flip from pink roses to a porky penis unleashed beside an airline breakfast, whose locations encompass antiwar demonstrations and tropical ponds? Check the manual, of course. If one thing matters, everything matters, the more than 2,400-image book that functions as—and generously exceeds the role of—an exhibition catalogue for Wolfgang Tillmans’s 301-photograph, two-video, seven-room monographic monster at Tate

print October 2003

Tal R

Tal R has a distinctive way of explaining his paintings. “I constantly have this hot- pot boiling and I throw all kinds of material into it,” he told an interviewer some time ago. More recently: “I do painting a bit like people make a lunch box.” Add the fact that his London solo debut—comprising thirteen bright and unruly mixed-media works, four embroidered cloth banners, and an installation of thirty-two drawings—was titled “Lords of Kolbojnik” (the latter word being kibbutz slang for the rubbish left over after a heavy meal), and it’s hard not to wonder, sometimes, whether the Israeli-born,