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25/5/2011

Jeff Wall

Bozar - Centre for Fine Arts, Bruxelles

Curated by Joël Benzakin

The Centre for Fine Arts presents The Crooked Path, an exhibition devoted to the Canadian photographer Jeff Wall. In this show, the artist creates a dialogue between his own works and those of other historical and contemporary artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Frank Stella, Dan Flavin, Dan Graham, Carl Andre, Thomas Struth, David Claerbout and Andreas Gurski.

Jeff Wall is undoubtedly one of the artists who profoundly influenced the art of the last three decades. Since the late 1970s the Canadian artist – with his large-format photographs, displayed in light boxes – has set out to redefine the paradigms of photography. Since the early days of his career, his images, with their references to the history of art and more particularly to classical painting, have reflected his conviction that it is possible to maintain a certain continuity even within the canons of modernism and his belief in the possibility of "painting modern life".

The exhibition The Crooked Path looks at the context that favoured the development of Jeff Wall's oeuvre and seeks to present, via an extensive selection of his own works and those of other artists, a trajectory through the photographer's aesthetic concerns. The project explores the close interconnections between artist’s own creative process and the influences and questioning that have marked that process.

Those influences have been pictorial, photographic, cinematic, literary, and documentary, in addition to the theoretical positions adopted by Wall himself. The exhibition aims to throw light both on the internal logic of his work and on the aesthetic experiences that have guided his decisions and his work as a whole.

A great variety of themes that are integral to Wall's work are tackled in the exhibition: minimalism and the relation to ‘scale’, historical photography, conceptual and post-conceptual photography, literature, documentary photography, and many others. To illustrate these themes the artist himself has chosen 25 of his works, from the 1970s to today; these make up the core of the exhibition. The positioning of these works will set up specific relations with a selection of other works selected by the exhibition's curators, Joël Benzakin and Jeff Wall himself. Visitors will be able to compare Jeff Wall's works with the works of other historical and contemporary artists, such as Marcel Duchamp, Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget, Bill Brandt, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Helen Levitt, Wols, Heinrich Zille, to artists closer to Wall's own generation, including Frank Stella, Bruce Nauman, Dan Flavin, Robert Smithson, Dan Graham, Douglas Huebler and others, and to a number of younger artists.

The Crooked Path, accordingly, offers the spectator a broad overview of the relationships, connections, suggestions, and confrontations between ca 130 works of art. With the participation of Jeff Wall, a "dialogue" will be established with works that have influenced his work directly or indirectly and created a favourable context for the development of his thinking and for the directions he has taken in his work. This approach will help to reveal the complexity and fertility of his creative output.

On the occasion of this exhibition a major catalogue will be published, whose original concept will be the direct result of the exhibition's "genesis" and will reflect its overall structure. Led by art historian Hans De Wolf numerous contributions by eminent specialists will embellish this publication which aims to be an innovative addition to the literature devoted to Jeff Wall.

The exhibition is produced by BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts and will travel after Brussels to the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea in Santiago de Compostella (Spain) where it will be held in autumn 2011.
Literary audio guide

Following the success of the first edition of ‘Talking Paintings’ about Lucas Cranach, with poems by Stefan Hertmans and Astrid Lampe among others, deBuren and BOZAR are once again presenting a series of literary reactions to visual artworks. Six authors were inspired by six of Jeff Wall’s pictures and wrote prose miniatures in which the pictures are brought to life. These stories are available in the audio guide in Dutch, English and French. The six authors are Jean Bofane, Bernhard Christiansen, Caroline Lamarche, David Nolens, Yves Petry and Chika Unigwe.

Scientific advisor and publication editor in chief: Hans Maria De Wolf
Support: Région de Bruxelles-Capitale | Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest, Embassy of Canada
In collaboration with: Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago di Compostela
Partner: Thalys
Sponsor: Nikon Belux

Image: The Thinker - 1986 - Transparency in lightbox - 221 x 229 cm © Jeff Wall - courtesy of the artist

MEET JEFF WALL: 23.05.2011 at 19:30
€ 6,00: Meeting
€ 10,00: Meeting + exhibition ticket (€ 8,00 for +60 and -26 years)

Press Officer:
Leen Daems T +32 (0)2 5078389 T +32 (0)479 986607 leen.daems@bozar.be

Opening Thursday 26th of May 2011

Centre for Fine Arts
Rue Ravensteinstraat 23, 1000 Brussels
Opening times: Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 6 pm
Thursday, 10 am to 9 pm
Closed Mondays
Tickets
€ 8 (for discounts, see www.bozar.be)
! Exceptionally with audioguide included !
Combitickets
€ 9,00: Jeff Wall + Beyond the Document
€ 12,00: Jeff Wall + The Power of Fantasy
€ 15,00: Jeff Wall + The Power of Fantasy + Beyond the Document

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