Curated by Theodora Vischer

Few artists working today illuminate the politics of everyday life with the subtle insight and devastating versatility of photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. He turns seemingly casual observations of simple subjects, like friends or flowers, into potent symbols of youth, community, mortality, and hope. The implicit social engagement of Tillmans’s work pervades the vast but carefully chosen survey now at Tate Modern. But a second exhibition, opening this month at the Fondation Beyeler, offers a more introspective view. This show, focusing on the artist’s studio-based work, will include portraits, still lifes, and staged shots, plus films and music. Look for Tillmans—an ingenious installation artist and quiet provocateur—to activate the complicated meanings in his own work, slyly tweaking the foundation’s patriarchal canon of blue-chip modernist masters.

— Brian Wallis