Artist Name: Jeff Wall
October 27, 2007 – January 27, 2008
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Jeff Wall is a Canadian photographer best known for his large-scale, color transparencies mounted in light boxes. Many of his images are staged and refer to the history of art and philosophical problems of representation. The photographs' compositions refer to historical artists like Velázquez, Hokusai, and Édouard Manet, or to writers such as Franz Kafka, Yukio Mishima, and Ralph Ellison. (Information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Wall)
I went to the Jeff Wall exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His images show the Conceptual Art, history, social interaction, and visual perception by using huge size and light boxes. His large-scale formats as well as his use of light boxes are very distinctive. As I viewed his work, I was amazed that his images are as high as the human body because he used the principles of design such as scale and proportion from his images. I was able to clearly see every detail of the images because his works are so large. The images show the relationship between the objects and the space within the frame more than I have seen in standard 8”X10” images. Also, his images referred to famous paintings. I observed his works for about 1 hour, and I think that he wants to make his works look like painting. For example, his picture of a woman is a remake of Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergeres picture. Next, Jeff Wall’s works also look like cinematography because he created his works by arranging many actors, and objects on location and then continued to shoot at scene. My favorite image is “A Sudden Gust of the Wind” based on a famous Hokusai print. This image amazed me because I wanted to know how Jeff Wall could capture a sense of frozen time while at the same faithfully recreating the composition of Hokusai. The many pieces of paper flying seem like the must challenging element to recreate.
In my opinion, I think Jeff Wall’s works are cohesive because of the constant use of large size format and light boxes. Conceptually, this body of work holds together because of his reference to other visual arts – especially painting, and cinematography to create his concept.
The formal elements of his images always show many planes, lines, color transparencies mounted in light boxes, and organic shapes. For example, “A Sudden Gust of the Wind” shows a very wide, open view, depth of field, and perspective. Although it is not apparent from this small picture of Jeff Wall’s work, the extremely large format lets the viewer “enter” the space of the image in an unusual way; it also for this same reason creates a feeling of refocusing. When I first saw this image, my eyes first noticed to the four people in the foreground. Then I looked at the mass of moving paper, which is at once in the foreground and the background. Also, Jeff Wall’s image shows three-dimensional space and the relationship of the plane and contains the illusion of deep space. I think Jeff Wall can capture the frozen time because “A Sudden Gust of the Wind” looks like such a spontaneous shot. I watched video about Jeff Wall in which he explained he had to shoot more than 100 shots to get this perfect image.
In conclusion, Jeff Wall’s works are successful because he can build all of his images to hold together effectively. I love his ideas because he can create spontaneous, imaginative, and intentional shots all the same time.