JEFF WALL

Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of works by Jeff Wall at the 541 West 24th Street gallery in New York.

November 8 – December 21, 2024

Wall connects photography with elements of painting, cinema, and literature in pictures that range from classic reportage to elaborate constructions. Some images emphasize what the artist calls “blatant artifice,” while others are made simply, spontaneously, and directly. Wall favors no particular approach and has explored the breadth and complexity of photography for several decades.

A number of works in the exhibition are what Wall calls “near documentary” images, which may resemble snapshots but are made in collaboration with people who appear in them. This group includes two full-length portraits, Young man wet with rain (2011) and Portrait in Noto, which was photographed in 2007 during a visit to Sicily, but printed only this year. Fallen rider, made in summer 2022, derives from an event witnessed by a friend thirty years ago; Wall recovered the memory of this account and reconstructed it near the place where it apparently occurred.

Also on view are Echo Park (2023), an image made in Los Angeles, and three early landscapes,  Steves Farm, Steveston; The Bridge; and The Jewish Cemetery (all 1980), which have not previously been shown together in the United States. Each of the earlier works depicts an area of urban or suburban settlement in the artist’s Vancouver birthplace. Steves Farm is Wall’s first documentary photograph, while Echo Park is his largest cityscape to date.

Another work occupies a zone somewhere between the documentary and the imaginary.