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White Cube is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Jeff Wall, his third with the gallery.
Widely considered one of the most influential artists working today, Wall is known for the diverse range of
his approach to picture making, from large-scale photographs in colour and black-and-white often made
in collaboration with the people who appear in them, to works on a more modest scale achieved with little
or no intervention by the artist. The exhibition features two separate bodies of work: three photographs
that Wall shot in Sicily in 2007 and, in the lower ground-floor gallery, seven new pictures.
Sicily 2007
In the ground-floor gallery, Wall will show, together for the first time, three documentary pictures of
Sicilian landscapes. The composition of Hillside, Sicily (2007) imbues the picture with a powerful downward
motion, emphasized by the truncation of the slope, while the scale of the picture and stippling of the flora
puts the work in dialogue with Modernist abstraction. Hillside near Ragusa (2007) evokes an ancient
pastoral setting, where shepherds have walked for thousands of years, the horizon punctuated by power
pylons whose forms echo the trees in the foreground. A similar mingling of eras is revealed in Ossuary
headstone (2007). Surrounding a headstone designed to stand for timelessness, the world seems rough
and temporary: weeds emerge from crumbling tiles and makeshift wires droop from a wall topped with
fresh flowers.
New photographs
In the lower ground-floor gallery, Wall will show seven photographs that each feature a figure, or group of
figures, many who appear to be playing or enacting a particular role. The title of Ivan Sayers, costume
historian, lectures at the University Women's Club, Vancouver, 7 December 2009. Virginia Newton-Moss
wears a British ensemble c. 1910, from Sayers' collection (2009) anchors the picture in a particular time
and place, and yet the picture itself depicts a fusing of past and present, with the contemporary setting
punctuated by the spectral presence of a model in a period ensemble. Boy falls from tree (2010) is both an
everyday event and the origin of a suburban fable, a misadventure that will become lodged forever into
the fabric of the boy’s identity. In Band & crowd (2011) a trio plays their drums and guitars with fervent
intensity to a sparse, partly disengaged crowd, while in Boxing (2011) two boys exchange blows amid the
measured calm of a middle-class living room. Young man wet with rain (2011) depicts a figure caught in a
moment of thought while seeking shelter from a rain shower, countless droplets clinging to his coat.
Jeff Wall was born in 1946 in Vancouver, Canada, where he lives and works. Group shows include
‘Documenta 11’, Kassel, Germany (2002), ‘The Age of Modernism: Art in the 20th Century’, Zeitgeist-
Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Künste, Berlin (1997) and ‘Documenta 10’, Kassel, Germany (1997). Solo
shows include ICA, London (1984), Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (1993), Whitechapel Gallery,
London (2001), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2001), Hasselblad Center, Göteborg (2002), Astrup
Fearnley Museum, Oslo(2004), Schaulager, Basel (2005), Tate Modern, London (2005), MoMA, New York
(2007), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2007), Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
(2010)and Bozar, Brussels (2011). Jeff Wall, ‘The Crooked Path’, will be at Centro Galego de Arte
Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain until 26 February 2012.
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