Jeff Wall "Lecture"

‘In Jeff Wall's photographic works, which are presented on a large scale in light boxes, we see people become objects in their fixed poses of frozen gestures. Wall (1946) has always been interested in faces where the impersonality has been heightened by gazing at something outside themselves. The individuals are also posing as objects. Movie Audience ( 1979) is the clearest example of this. Basically, Wall depicts what is least interesting in a cinema. After all, the film can entertain us, not the expressionless faces that we can only see partially illuminated by the light radiating from the screen. Since 1986 Wall has been making more dramatic photographic works which stage persons and scenery. They seem like people in an impersonal world trying to win individual identities by dressing up. The spectator catches them in this almost intimate act. Wall came up in Rudiger Schöttle's lecture at De Appel on Theatre Gardens, Bestiary of Art and Architecture/I>, a production for which he is also invited. Work by Wall was presented in Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum with Gunther Förg at the end of last year. Jeff Wall has published an extensive article about Dan Graham's Kammerspiel (see Museumjournaal 1986, nos. 5 and 6, 1987, no.1 and Real Life Magazine). Jeff Wall will give a lecture about his own work and Graham's Kammerspiel.’ (‘Sunday afternoons: Jeff Wall’, Newsletter De Appel, 2 (1987) 2.)