Rétrospective Jeff Wall à Bâle : « Photographies 1978 - 2004 »
Le 2011-10-07 12:52:07

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Chez Schaulager à Bâle (Suisse). Informations et tarifs sur le site : www.schaulager.org Schaulager's third exhibition is dedicated to the work of the Canadian artist Jeff Wall (born1946). Since 1978, Jeff Wall has produced around one hundred and twenty photographs,which is not an especially large number for a photographer. In Basel approximately seventyof these works will be shown, from all phases of his creative life. Several of these works arealready icons of contemporary photography. Others are rarely exhibited and little known. Andseveral are exhibited for the first time ever. « Jeff Wall. Photographs 1978–2004 » is the largest exhibition of this artist's work thus far. Itpresents the first opportunity to experience the full range and distinctiveness of the artist'screative work produced over a period of many years. The exhibition shows how his oeuvrehas for years – apart from the technical advances – given form to a pictorial concept that JeffWall has called, in allusion to Charles Baudelaire's dictum on Manet, the ‘painting of modernlife'. It is a pictorial concept, however, that was developed a hundred years later, undercompletely different circumstances, using the formal language of photography. Jeff Wall's colour photographs are not presented like traditional photographs, but like large,luminous images. His work consists of large-format colour transparencies, mounted inaluminium boxes and illuminated from behind; since 1996, the artist has also produced largeblack-and-white photographs. The direct effect of the lighting in combination with the scaleaccounts for the almost magical presence of Jeff Wall's images. Only gradually does itbecome apparent that – in contrast to the promise of the illuminated surfaces – the subjectmatter often consists of unspectacular scenes, most of them from ordinary urban life. Theyare photographs of urgent realism and atmospheric density that have contributed decisivelyto a re-evaluation of the medium as an artistic genre on a par with painting and sculpture. The focus on representing scenes of contemporary everyday life places Wall's oeuvre in thecontext of a tradition initiated over one hundred years ago by both painting and photography.Photography in particular claimed to show an unfiltered representation of the present,which, in those days, meant industrialised society and its effect on the life of the individual. Similarly, Wall chooses to concentrate on the everyday life he encounters, exploring it with avery specific, intensely casual way. His native city, Vancouver, the capital of the Canadianprovince of British Columbia, ideally illustrates – in comparison to major cities like Paris,Berlin and New York – the ‘new presence' of a late industrial and multicultural society.Against this background, Jeff Wall's investigation of the history and conventions ofphotography as medium of depiction makes perfect sense, as does his study of film andnineteenth-century painting, especially Manet, who pioneered the peinture de la vie moderneprior to the advent of photography. On this basis Jeff Wall constructs his new, contemporary pictorial concept. He experimentswith the means offered by painting and photography. His search for a credible means ofrepresenting everyday life has led to a visual idiom in an open balance between the twinpossibilities of the documentary photograph and the cinematographic staging. In the midnineties, the emphasis shifted from cinematographic photography to documentary or fauxdocumentary photography. Whether cinematographic or documentary, the attitude that informs all of his photographswith increasing clarity is the same: They have no moral pretensions; indeed, they do notcommunicate a fixed meaning, but rather emphasise its ambiguity. For all their visualperfection and saturated presence, they are in essence fragments that leave things open.What makes them so fascinating is that each picture seems to tell a very special and uniquestory, but one that remains alien for all its familiarity. The exhibition was organised by Schaulager, and after being shown in Basel it will beexhibited, in reduced form, at the Tate Modern in London. A catalogue raisonné is beingpublished on the occasion of the exhibition that will illustrate and comment on all of JeffWall's work since 1978 (Steidl Verlag, Göttingen). © Jeff Wall « A ventriloquist at a birthday party in October 1947 » 1990 Transparency in lightbox 229 x 352.5 cm

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