Jeff Wall at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen (Basel, Switzerland) is a comprehensive solo show that features more than 50 works of the Canadian artist. Spanning five decades, the retrospective presents a recent works, usually in counterpoint to older pictures. Many of the artist’s most famous works are included, such as “Milk”, 1984; “After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue”, 1999–2000; or “A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai)”, 1993. The exhibition places particular emphasis on works produced in the last two decades, among them photographs on public view for the first time. The exhibition has been conceived in close collaboration with the artist. Jeff Wall at Fondation Beyeler runs until April 21, 2024.

Jeff Wall / Fondation Beyeler, Riehen (Basel, Switzerland). Media Preview, January 26, 2024.

Press text (excerpt):

At the beginning of the new year, the Fondation Beyeler is devoting a comprehensive solo show to Canadian artist Jeff Wall (b. 1946). It is the first exhibition of such scope in Switzerland in close to two decades. Wall has contributed significantly to establishing photography as an autonomous art form and is regarded today as one of its foremost practitioners. Featuring more than 50 works spanning five decades, the exhibition presents a comprehensive overview of the artist’s ground-breaking oeuvre, from his iconic large-scale transparencies displayed in lightboxes to his large-format black-and-white photographs and inkjet colour prints. The exhibition places particular emphasis on works produced in the last two decades, among them photographs on public view for the first time. The exhibition has been conceived in close collaboration with the artist.

In his work, Jeff Wall probes the boundary between fact and invention, chance and construction. From the mid-1970s, he has explored ways to expand the artistic possibilities of photography. Wall calls his work ‘cinematography’, seeing in the cinema a model of creative freedom and invention that had been subdued in the dominant definition of photography as ‘documentary’. Many of his photographs are constructed images that involve extensive planning and preparation, collaboration with performers, and ‘post production’ work. Jeff Wall thus creates images that diverge from the notion of photography as primarily a faithful documentation of reality.

Wall was born in 1946 in Vancouver, Canada, where he lives and works. He began engaging with photography in the 1960s—the heyday of Conceptual art. From the mid-1970s, he began producing large transparencies mounted in lightboxes. With this format, till then associated more with advertising than with photography as an art, he pioneered a novel form of artistic display. Since the mid-1990s, Wall has expanded his repertoire—first with large-format black-and-white photographs and more recently with colour prints. His work has been the object of numerous solo shows worldwide, among others at Tate Modern, London (2005), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007), the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2014) and the Glenstone Museum, Potomac (2021).

As Jeff Wall’s imagery evolves between documentary recording, cinematic composition, and free poetic invention, viewers are confronted with a broad array of subjects and themes, faced with beauty and ugliness, ambiguity and disquiet. Wall feels that the art of photography ought to be as free in its range of subject and treatment as all the other art forms—to be as poetic as poetry, as literary as the novel, as painterly as painting, as theatrical as theatre, all with the aim to be essentially photographic.

#jeffwall #fondationbeyeler #contemporaryart

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Art TV pioneer Vernissage TV provides you with an authentic insight into the world of contemporary fine arts, design and architecture. With its two main series "No Comment" and "Interviews", art tv channel VernissageTV attends opening receptions of exhibitions worldwide, interviews artists, designers, architects. VTV provides art lovers with news, reports and features from the international art scene. VernissageTV: the window to the art world. Das Fenster zur Kunstwelt. La fenêtre sur le monde de l'art. A janela para o mundo da arte. La ventana al mundo del arte. نافذة على عالم الفن. 到艺术世界的窗口。Окно в мир искусства. Since 2005.