Appearance

A major figure in contemporary art, Jeff Wall has deeply transformed the way we think about photography. By aligning it with a broader pictorial tradition and appraising it in its relations to other arts – painting first, but also cinema and literature – he has redefined its essence and extended the field of its possibilities.

Conceived in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition Appearance gathers 30 or so of his large-format photographs and light boxes. Offering a broad view of his work from the end of the 1970s to today, it creates a dialogue between some of his most emblematic works and a significant ensemble of recent photographs. The whole show is articulated around a notion that constantly resonates in his work: the question of the enigma of the image. Through this prism, various preoccupations that have been running through his work since the beginning and have been developed in his latest works in remarkable ways, like the questions of the figure, the gesture, the speech, the gaze, the landscape or the image itself, are openly approached.