Sheet One Possibly 2001 - 2002

Curator: Right, let’s talk about “Sheet One,” a C-print photograph, possibly from 2001 or 2002, by Wolfgang Tillmans. The image is striking—a seemingly casual shot looking down a set of stairs covered in a bright red carpet. What’s your first take? Editor: That crimson just sucks you right in, doesn't it? The stairs themselves look ordinary, even a little worn around the edges with those unidentifiable splodges of something on the walls... but that relentless red is anything but bland. Curator: I agree. It’s interesting because Tillmans is often celebrated for his almost accidental-seeming compositions. There’s a feeling here of capturing a fleeting moment, like a snatched glance at something ordinary transformed by the light and color. But he is playing with a grand tradition. Editor: It feels like this intensely mundane take is something more than itself. The composition almost reminds me of religious iconography; specifically, the descents depicted in some traditional depictions of the Deposition. Curator: Absolutely! Stairs, visually, represent movement, transition…a journey, even. The downward perspective forces our eyes, like pilgrims, toward something unseen beyond the top of the stairs. That bold carpet serves as a ritualistic, decorative path into some further mystery, I suspect. Editor: It reminds me of going to my grandmother's, honestly, who had a blood-red stair runner installed to stop her cats from wrecking her expensive floor. Looking at it feels sort of... uncanny; the familiar, slightly stale homeyness rubbing against an almost overwhelming symbolic charge. Curator: Ha! Maybe Tillmans, in his typically sly way, is hinting that our everyday lives *are* charged with a certain sublimity, a subtle transcendence if only we pay attention. It's photography, it’s the poetry of the quotidian. Editor: Maybe you're right, though there's something subtly unsettling in that casual perspective for me. Regardless, this crimson staircase makes an unlikely but strangely evocative sacred space. Curator: I think I concur... And ultimately, this image proves Tillmans' genius. His eye finds grandeur in what others might dismiss, making "Sheet One" so remarkable. Editor: Yes, indeed. A simple domestic space turned into a journey into something perhaps greater, certainly more strange.