Jeff Wall

by Wall, Jeff; Lauter, Rolf

• ISBN13: 9783791326078
• ISBN10: 3791326074
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-11-01
• Publisher: Prestel Pub

Summary

In his staged situations based on everyday scenes, the Canadian artist Jeff Wall creates a subtle interplay between carefully selected settings and strongly defined figures. The aesthetic fascination that the back-lit transparencies have on the viewer is intensified by their striking brilliance. By looking carefully at Wall's works, however, layers of complex spatial, temporal and contextual issues emerge -- issues that reflect different aspects of our present-day reality. At first glance, the places, scenes and activities depicted in Wall's works look like snapshots, often taken from a distant perspective. Closer examination reveals that they are meticulously staged compositions. The artist incorporates figures within urban, rural or architectural contexts so that they become actors relating a story. The presence of one or more figures lends scenes a frequently mask-like appearance, often verging on the grotesque, and their activities, be they routine or unusual, become 'images of collective memories.' Book jacket.

Author Biography

Jeff Wall was born in Vancouver, Canada in 1946. He has been working with large-format, back-lit transparencies mounted in light boxes since 1977. He sees himself as 'a painter of modern life,' creating an image of our times with contemporary technical means

Table of Contents

Foreword	7	(4)
Rolf Lauter
Jeff Wall Opened My Eyes	11	(2)
Jean-Christophe Ammann
Jeff Wall: Figures & Places	13	(18)
Rolf Lauter
Figure and Customary Gesture	31	(3)
Memory of Place	34	(12)
Interiors: Humans and their Lifeworld	46	(30)
Inside---Outside	76	(10)
The Outside World: Urban Spaces---Private Places	86	(24)
Memory of Nature	110	(86)
The Adventure of a Photographer	126	(6)
Italo Calvino
Odradek, Taboritska 8, Prague, 18 July 1994	132	(6)
Jean-Christophe Ammann
Photography and Strategies of the Avant-Grade Jeff Wall in Conversation with Boris Groys	138	(4)
Image Technology and the Pictorial Image: Media Images Versus Art Images	142	(8)
Hans Dickel
The Hole Truth Jan Tumlir talks with Jeff Wall about the Flooded Grave	150	(8)
Monad or Nomad Human Beings and Wastelands in the Work of Jeff Wall	158	(10)
Jeremy Gaines
A Painter of Modern Life An Interview between Jeff Wall and Jean-Francois Chevrier	168	(18)
Constructing an Apparent Reality: Settings, Gazes, Paraphrases	186	(10)
Bernd Reiss
Jeff Wall: A Brief Biography	196	(1)
List of Works	197	(2)
List of Exhibitions	199	(6)
Jeff Wall: Selected Critical Writings & Interviews	205