SÉRGIO MAH
Words

THIS WILL BE JEFF WALL’S FIRST SOLO EXHIBITION IN PORTUGAL AND ONE OF HIS LARGEST TO DATE. THE 64 PHOTOGRAPHS PRODUCED BETWEEN 1980 AND 2023 WILL OCCUPY THE ENTIRE MAAT GALLERY’S EXHIBITION SPACE.

AFTER ‘INVISIBLE MAN’ BY RALPH ELLISON | THE PROLOGUE, 1999-2001
TRANSPARECY IN LIGHTBOX, 174 X 250,5 CM
*COURTESY OF THE ARTIST*

Over recent decades, Jeff Wall (Vancouver, Canada, 1946) has been widely considered one of the important figures on the international visual arts scene. His work demonstrates a particular focus on genealogies and models of visual representation that mark the history of Western culture, especially a certain notion of the Western image. The medium he employs is photography, while his artistic imagination is more based on exploring aesthetic and conceptual links with painting, literature, theatre and cinema, which are viewed as correlative modes of representing and fictionalising reality.

The majority of Hall’s images are the product of staging and construction, not situations that were found, like classic reportage. The images are previously conceived, planned and then carried out, just like a painter, stage or film director does. Often, the final images are the result of a combination of different photographic registers. With the advent of new digital technologies, the range of possibilities has expanded significantly, raising the levels of execution and proficiency in composition and montage.

Another distinctive feature of Wall’s work is the scale of the photographs. He has been producing large images since the late 1970s, which was original when compared to what was more common and conventional in artistic photography at the time. The size of the photographs has nothing to do with a mere desire to enlarge. For the artist, it’s more to do with trying to achieve the scale of the human body, thus making it possible to set up a level of proximity between the scale of the figures and objects in the image and that of the viewers observing it. This way, the size of the images offers the viewer the chance to enter and inhabit the interior of the image, focussing on certain parts and details, thus experiencing the various senses of an individualised viewing.

Throughout his work, the artist has dealt with recognisable themes from the public realm. What issues stand out are the problems, tensions and anomie inherent to modern and contemporary societies, such as loneliness, poverty, alienation, urban violence, delinquency, racism, crime, abandonment and social exclusion. These are themes that inspire the photographer to create visionary, enigmatic, dramatic and absurdly logical images of the times in which we live.

JEFF WALL

FRANCISCO TRÊPA