Jeff Wall comprised thirty-four of the artist’s celebrated back-lit photo tableaux, all created between 1978 and 1997. Beginning chronologically with The Destroyed Room, Wall’s first in the backlit photo medium, the exhibition highlighted the intricate, art historical and literary references of the artist’s dense, large-scale work. The Vampires’ Picnic (1991), for example, mimics the grandiose layouts of Titian and Watteau’s fêtes champêtres (or “garden parties”), replacing the traditional, aristocratic figures in lush, floral settings with contemporary “vampires” and their victims in a banal sewer construction site. A new series of absorptive, black-and-white photographs, depicting mostly solitary figures in unadorned common spaces, closed out the exhibition.
The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue.
Jeff Wall traveled from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; to MOCA Grand Avenue; to the Art Tower, Mito, Japan.
Jeff Wall was organized by Kerry Brougher, Curator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
The Canadian artist links the narrative traditions of tableau painting and "directorial mode" photography. Comprising 34 of the artist's works, including a new series, this was Wall's first retrospective as well as the largest exhibition of his works to date. Accompanied by a catalogue and traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, and the Art Tower, Mito, Japan.