MISSION STATEMENT

Though most of the millions of tourists who have ridden Beaubourg’s “caterpillar” escalators over the years had no clue it was there, the BPI was central to the Centre Pompidou’s public mission. Intended — in a pre-Internet era — as a place where anyone and everyone could access news, science, and all other kinds of knowledge, it was open until 10:00 pm and free to all, with no need for any kind of registration or membership card. With holdings that count in the millions, it could accommodate 2,200 readers at one sitting. For a bibliophile and paper junkie like Tillmans, whose worldwide fame is in large part due to his work for magazines, the BPI is the perfect setting for an immersive perambulation through his 40-year-long career. “It’s been an incredible honor to be invited to show at the Pompidou,” he said at the press conference, “not only because it’s the last exhibition before closure, but because the building has been an inspiration to me since my early teens. Coming here as an adolescent from a small town in North Rhein-Westphalia was like a realization of what is possible, what culture can do, how exciting it can be, and how technology and culture work together to make new forms.”

Filling 6,000 square meters would be a daunting prospect for any artist, but, as Tillmans pointed out, the BPI is especially challenging for him given his penchant for hanging works on walls — the library is largely devoid of them. Among the delights of Nothing Could Have Prepared Us is how he grapples with the found object that is the BPI and turns adversity to his advantage. His approach is typified by his handling of the library’s old gray carpet, which is marked with green painted lines that show readers the way to the different departments. Taking it out would have delayed opening by two weeks, on what was already a very tight schedule, so Tillmans simply left it in place, as a souvenir of the library’s activity and also a sort of metaphor of a circuit board. And as shelves, partitions, and other furnishings were removed, traces of an older, purple carpet emerged — when the gray carpet tiles were laid, around the year 2000, the workers simply cut around anything that was too cumbersome to move, leaving the original in place. In this way, an archaeology of the library’s occupation emerged, one whose manner of creation has certain parallels with the photograms that form part of Tillmans’s oeuvre.

Since walls are in short supply, Tillmans uses all those at his disposal, with photos displayed in out-of-the-way peripheral corridors, as well as on the glass façade, in library shelves, and on library tables. Horizontal glass display cases contain all sorts of books, magazines, and paper ephemera, while long mirror-polished tables underline the fact that the building itself is also an exhibit, bringing its famous colored ceiling ducts into the same plane of vision as the other works on show. Indeed, the juxtapositions are pregnant with playful associations: a male nude dialogues with a bright-red fire-hose reel; photos of rats in drains and trash line a corridor strewn with boxes of rodent poison; in an image taken at airport security, the signs marked “Emergency exit” and “Rest of World Passports” point in the same direction as the Pompidou’s own emergency-exit lights; while a tiny photo of two bare-chested boys in a club is taped beneath the label “510.0 math textbooks (secondary level).”

Tillmans’s longstanding interest in the lived life of buildings is also present in Book for Architects, a 450-image two-channel projection that he compiled at the request of Rem Koolhaas for the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, and which has now joined the Pompidou’s collections. Indeed architecture is everywhere, from portraits of architects — Koolhaas, Renzo Piano, Oscar Niemeyer — or of buildings — Library ladies (São Paulo) (2010), which shows women using the library at Lina Bo Bardi’s celebrated SESC Pompeia. Data Center Warm Air Outlets, Santa Clara (2023) is an ironic nod to the tubes at the Pompidou, and Macau Bridge (1993) contrasts the massive concrete piers of a bridge under construction with Beaubourg’s steel gerberettes. Ceiling Scan (2025), a laser installation intended to focus attention on the Pompidou’s own ceilings, also recalls the artist’s longstanding interest in club culture.

Exercises in world-building, Tillmans’s exhibitions are meticulously prepared, as he shows us in the BPI display, where we see some of the giant analogue models he used to help devise the hang, a theme he has spoken about in the pages of PIN–UP (the issue in question features in the show's display tables). Organized like a library borrowed from Borges, with a classification system unknown to Dewey and his decimals, Nothing could have prepared us, Everything could have prepared us takes the visitor down myriad rabbit holes, its chance encounters and unexpected associations as rich as anything found on the Internet. Except here, in this labyrinthine walk-in picture book, you grapple with real matter, real objects, real people, and real space. As a paean to the Pompidou, and all it stands for, it’s an absolute triumph.