Artist Post #7: Jeff Wall

A WOMAN WITH A COVERED TRAY, 2003
TRANSPARENCY IN LIGHT BOX
72 X 89 5/8 X 10 1/4 IN. ( 182.88 X 227.65 X 26.04 CM )

OVERPASS, 2001
CIBACHROME TRANSPARENCY, ALUMINUM LIGHTBOX, FLUORESCENT BULBS
90 1/2 X 118 1/8 X 10 1/4 IN. ( 229.87 X 300.04 X 26.04 CM )

The Giant, 1992, transparency, light box

Dead Troops Talk, 1992, transparency, light box

Jeff Wall

"Jeff Wall studied art history at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and at the Courtauld Institute, London. His work has been exhibited in numerous international exhibitions, including a touring solo retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago, and the San Francisco Museum of Art, in 2007. He has been the recipient of numerous prizes, including The Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award for Art Photography (2001); Ontario Arts Council, Canada; Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (2002); and the Roswitha Haftmann Prize for the Visual Arts (2003).”

-Marian Goodman Gallery

Jeff Wall for many decades now has worked with tableaux photography. He creates and sets and sets up situations with actors and photographs them. This relation to what is real and what is not is something that I think about everyday when I think about photography. To me it is interesting is the shift from what really happened and what Wall creates from his memory of what happened. Wall also deals with being a “painter of modern life” and considers himself as a painter. He sees being a painter as a maker of art. I read being a painter of modern life is more using modern technology to create art as painters of earlier age would use painting to depict the same situations. Photography is a medium that can be used to paint ideas together. Instead of putting paintbrush to canvas, Wall and other photographers, take pieces of photographs and stitch them together. Wall also takes memories and literary sets them up as a painter would start a painting of their memory. I see no difference in what painters do and what photographers since the 70's do. I think of work that I do as sketching or finally painting to create the image. There is an act of making that art is concerned about.

"There’s no one way to come into this relationship with reportage. I think that’s what people in the 70s and 80s really worked on: not to deny the validity of documentary photography, but to investigate potentials that were blocked before, blocked by a kind of orthodoxy about what photography really was.”

-Jeff Wall via interview with Museo Magazine

"Wall encourages us to accept and enjoy the illusion of his realism”

-Sheena Wagstaff

LINKS:

Gallery: http://www.mariangoodman.com/ (they have a lot of good artists... I should make a trip!)

Interview: http://www.museomagazine.com/issue-0/jeff-wall

Website: http://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/jeff-wall/

"Jeff Wall | Museo Magazine." Interview by David Shapiro.Issues | Museo Magazine. Museo Publications, LLC. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. http://www.museomagazine.com/issue-0/jeff-wall.

"Jeff Wall - November 16, 2002 - January 4, 2003." Marian Goodman Gallery. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. http://www.mariangoodman.com/exhibitions/2002-11-16_jeff-wall/.

Wagstaff, Sheena. Jeff Wall Photographs 1978-2004. London: Tate Enterprises, 2005. Print.