Wolfgang Tillmans’ Kepler Venice Tables (2013) is an inkjet print on cotton paper that pictures a meticulously staged tabletop constellation of images and documents, from NASA Kepler materials to sequential photographs and celestial studies. The result is a conceptually rich artwork in contemporary photography, a limited photo edition that connects the language of prints and art editions with Tillmans’ investigative eye for how pictures circulate in the world.

The work draws on Tillmans’ long-running use of table installations, where photographs, prints, clippings, and found imagery are arranged on wooden tables to invite open-ended reading and reordering. As he has explained, a table offers clarity and contingency at once, a format central to his Truth Study Center presentations that appear throughout major exhibitions.