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A new show of Wolfgang Tillmans's photographs reveals that the Turner Prize-winner can still startle, writes Helena Douglas ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

A new show of photographs by Wolfgang Tillmans fits perfectly within the cool white spaces of London's Serpentine Gallery. The images here explore the relationship between the figurative and the abstract, and further reveal Tillmans's desire to push the boundaries of the medium. Dramatic journalistic pieces sit alongside mystical dreamlike works; grainy black-and-whites are juxtaposed with windows of glowing colour. There are portraits, social scenes, architectural details, abstracts, natural events.

It is not just the mix of photographs that is unusual, but their presentation, too. Serried ranks of neatly framed works do not jive with Tillmans's mindset. Instead he mixes huge images with tiny ones, displays his work in perspex cases or on the tops of tables, sticks them to the walls with tape, or hangs them from bulldog clips. The images themselves range across different formats: cibachrome, polaroids, inkjet prints, photocopies. The captions are unhelpfully brief and often in German. The effect is ephemeral and unsettling, like a fleeting snapshot of the artist's mind.

Tillmans was born in the small German city of Remscheid, but he studied art in Britain. He made his name in the 1990s with his casual images of human life and everyday objects, and he soon expanded his repertoire to encompass portraiture, landscape and still lifes. In 2000 he won the Turner prize for his installation of photographic work—the first time the award went to a photographer. Most recently he has turned his creative eye to abstract experimentation, and these are the works at the centre of this exhibition.

Among them are minimalist and beautiful pieces of shiny photographic paper, saturated with colour and creased or folded like photographic sculptures. Tillmans transforms the chemical process into a thing of beauty. He strips photography bare, leaving us to marvel at its fundamentals. Perhaps the most remarkable work is "paper drop (Roma)", in which a simple sheet of photographic paper is rolled back on itself. Elegantly curved in the shape of a water drop, the paper's matte white exterior contrasts with its sheeny shadowed interior. The result is surprisingly sensuous, reminiscent of the works of Man Ray.

The most stunning abstract work in this show is “Ostgut Freischwimmer”, an enormous wall-sized image hung on its own. Like a splash of ink in a glass of water, this blue sweep of colour against a white background is full of swirling strokes that draw the eye. Its waves and currents convey the slow progress of a swimmer.

This is an unusual and provocative show that viewers will love and hate in equal measure. Its success lies in the way Tillmans interrogates photography and explores what it really is. His evident answer is both liberating and subversive: it can be anything you want it to be.

"Wolfgang Tillmans" is at the Serpentine Gallery in London until September 19th

(Helena Douglas is a writer working in London. She writes regularly on photography for More Intelligent Life.)