WHAT: "Jeff Wall"
WHEN: Opening December 9 through January 21, Monday-Saturday 10AM-6PM
WHERE: Marian Goodman Gallery, 24 West 57th Street, New York
WHY THIS SHOW MATTERS: Jeff Wall is at it again with his newest exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery. The artist, who has made a name for himself with a stylized form of highly cinematic photographs (part-staged, part-documentary) shows new works along with three pieces made in Sicily in 2007, shown together for the first time. Wall’s newest pieces contain much more subtlely and stillness than is typical of his oeuvre (neither are any of these works presented as lightboxes, as his most famous pieces are). The large-scale piece “Boxing” (2011) features two teenage boys sparring in a pristinely kept, cream-colored, Ikea-furnished living room. Their athletic poses and freeze-framed fast motions contrast heavily with the static setting, making them appear as if they’ve been cut and pasted into the composition, their shadows cast on the carpet a reminder of the thin line between reality and fiction in the photograph.
That photograph, along with “Boy Falls From Tree” (2010) seems consonant with his older work, while “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 Sayer’s Collection” (2009) and “Authentication. Claus Jahnke, Costume Historian, Examining a Document Relating to an Item in His Collection” (2010) seem a welcome departure. As the titles indicate, these are portraits of collectors with their troves of art. They are stunning and intimate, perfectly capturing a subject within his element. At first glance, without a background in Wall’s constructed set-ups and penchant for obsessive details, one might dismiss this new body of work as a random assortment of landscape shots and perfect decisive-moments. But, don’t be fooled, the new pictures are just as calculated as ever. We may just be seeing a new side to him.
To see images from "Jeff Wall" at Marian Goodman Gallery, click on the slide show.
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