A lens to capture the puzzle of time

Among the artists who have achieved great international notoriety in recent decades, Canadian Jeff Wall (n. 1946) seems to be one of the best and most literally interpreted the lesson of painter, architect and theorist Léon Battista Alberti. In his 1435 Picture, Alberti compared a frame to a window: « First of all, on the surface where I paint, draw a rectangle of the desired size, which I consider as an open window through which the theme to paint will be seen. » Wall photographs now exhibited at Maat – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology of the EDP Foundation in Lisbon, are also like windows that open on the white walls and give to landscapes, corners of the world or human situations that we don’t find every day. In the case of light boxes -rectaluminated images, printed on a translucent film -even have aluminum frames.

« When I first came to Maat, it seemed to me that this room and this building would provide a very specific opportunity, because it is obviously not the usual museum space, » said the artist on a guided tour of his first solo exhibition in our country, Jeff Wall-Time Still: Photographs 1980-2023, which will be patent until September 1. The montage, he added, sought to underline « the contrast between the curvature of the building and the angular rectangularity of the photos, to create a decorative sensation, from a set for which it would be interesting to look, regardless of what was found about it. »

The result, he considers, does not defraud expectations. “I am very pleased, because I think it has this quality, even if each photo individually has its own character. It creates a set of colors – with trees, people, lights, this and that, interiors and outdoors – that makes the room interesting itself. I imagine that many people will arrive there, will look down: ‘Beautiful exhibition!’ And they will leave the following. In a way they saw it in one of its essential aspects, which was to bring this room to life, ”he says with a touch of exaggeration.

Curator Sérgio Mah notes that, since the inauguration of Maat in 2016, this « is the first exhibition in which we can see only the building, only the construction, where people have the opportunity to perceive the space – this oval had never been shown like this. »

The Spanish Epiphany
Degree in Art History from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Jeff Wall continued his studies at the Courtauld Institute in London (where he also dedicated himself to philosophy), and taught at various universities.

In 1977, during a visit to Europe, he rediscovered the tradition of Western painting and had a kind of epiphany, which would lead him to resume artistic activity, suspended for seven years. The meeting with Las Girls in Prado was decisive.

« It was surprised to realize to what extent all those images were contemporary, » he would remember. «Las Girls were not a thing of the past; The image was there in the contemporary environment in the world. I was looking at them in the present.

He digested those great Prado paintings on his return to London, and as he looked through the bus window, an idea came to him. «I kept seeing those rectalimated things in the van stations. And I had a click that these backward images could be a way of doing photography that would somehow bind to these scale and body elements that were important to Judd and Newmann and Pollock (three of the most influential American artists in the 1940s-70), as well as for Velázquez, Goya, Ticiano and Manet.

Thus were their iconic boxes of light, or transparencies, which combined elements of art history, which Wall had studied and knew deeply with the contemporary world. One of the first of 1978, now considered a modern classic, was a completely destroyed fourth photograph that was inspired by a large Louvre screen, the death of Sardanapalo, painted by Delacroix in 1827. Others cite works by Poussin, Hokusai, Rodin and Manet.

The man of light boxes
« I did these transparencies uninterrupted for thirty years, » recalled the artist in Lisbon. Around 2007-2008, he decided to abandon this language and explore the possibilities that offered him the ink jet printed photographs. «I was a little tired of having only one type of printing, a single type of end product. I never wanted my work to be limited that way. I didn’t like to be just ‘the man of the light boxes’. And I can do this again when you want, because all transparencies are produced in my dark chamber.
Initially their images were produced by firms that made advertising panels, carved to « make ads very quickly, not to make quality impressions, which take longer, » he said. «20 years ago it was a real struggle to even print. Many of the older (works) impressions are not even original from the 70’s and 80’s, because they were not very well done, and replace them. Among these we see emblematic works such as Insomnia (1994), who portrays a man lying with open eyes under a table in a banal kitchen, Odradek, Taboritská 8, Prague, 18 July 1994, inspired by Kafka’s text, and perhaps the most recognizable of all, After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, The Extension (1999-2000) In a chaotic room, with hundreds of lamps suspended on the ceiling.

Crime scene
«Most Jeff Wall photographs results from construction and composition processes,” writes Sérgio Mah in the presentation text. « These are previously thought, planned and later executed images, like what a painter or film director does. » Or someone, we could add, who plans a crime and puts it in practice meticulously.

In fact, many of Jeff Wall’s photographs propose to us clues, evidence, suggesting a mystery or plot that may have anything of police romance. This thorough and long preparation partly explains the restricted character of his work – over half a century of career, he produced only 200 works, which was never an impediment to exposing in the best -rated institutions, such as the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern de London or the Beyeler Foundation of Basel.
If in the oval room we find the light boxes that look like windows, in the rest of course we have the latest works -from 2007 onwards -printed on paint jet. A first nucleus portrays situations with a performative character – a concert, a dumbbell survey, a lecture. The concert, which watch half a dozen dripped cats, was organized by the artist. The band exists, and has a small group of followers, but the whole situation was ‘invented’ and had the choreography of Jeff Wall.

«The question of whether it is something done by me or recorded by me is not absolutely clear. It is invented by me because I was the one who set up the concert, but once assembled photographed directly, ”he said.
Making the counterpoint, we find an enigmatic image to black and white. «Here we have the opposite. Leads us to think about interiority. It is not easy, without clues, to realize what it is about. « It is a fridge chamber, where they store fish, fruit, vegetables, » explains the artist. “To take this picture I had to wrap the machine in a protection because the atmosphere inside was so cold that the machine freezes. Forty degrees below zero. I was fascinated when entering this camera, which was not being used, and see that the ice was all on the ceiling. I thought I should be on the floor. It seemed to turn my legs into the air. In this case, there was no staging or choreography. «Much of the photography I do is documentary. I am perfectly happy to take a photograph as another photographer when I find the right conditions. In this case, I saw the building, I wondered how it would be inside, had the opportunity to enter. I realized that it was something that was rarely seen, and wanted to photograph how it would do any image reporter. I thought it brought an unknown message from the unknown.

A vision that never forgets
The great distinction that Jeff Wall makes between his works is not relative to the theme, the dimension or time they were taken, but if the photographs were taken outside or inside. «Reflect the difference between being out and inside. In exterior we have the sky, the horizon, when we go inside we enter a part of the different world.
However, there is a work that stands out right away to the first of all others: in fact, it seems more a painting than a photograph. It’s called Recovery and the colors remind you of the paintings painted by Gauguin on Tahiti-a kind of paradise vision in pink, yellow and living green.

«I want for me the same freedom that there is a writer, a painter or a poet,” complains the artist. Then tell how this image occurred to him. «I was very happy to learn of the recovery of a person I love. And I imagined the moment we feel sure of this recovery. It is a awake dream. What we wanted happened. This moment would be very short, a vision that has and never forgets.

Other images are less optimistic, such as the one that shows a woman approaching some cards under a road viaduct in Los Angeles. “I had the experience, perhaps you have it, to see it, to see these shelters by the road, and we don’t know whether or not someone is inside. It is a mystery. I wanted to take this picture and went looking for all the possible places, until I found the right one. There are many places where it would be fantastic to photograph, but they are not available.

The flowers and the garden
On the walls, we see the photos of a woman in the laundry room dressing room, a man to make a deadly back in a club for retired military, a woman in a kind of old -fashioned cabinet.
Looking around him, the artist comments: “I like my exhibitions to look beautiful, like someone who makes a flower arrangement in a jar. The colors, for example… I like the shirt of the man in the photo of California, this woman’s turquoise coat… there we have very different streets: Sicily and Los Angeles. Basically, I’m doing interior decoration for a gallery », Graceja.

Certainly this is not the impression we have when faced with the Monumental Triptic that closes the exhibition, I Giardini / The Gardens, 2017.

The photographs were taken in a large property on the outskirts of Turin. «I visited her with my wife, who was interested in the garden, particularly in the geometric maze on the right, which was designed by a British gardener, Russell Page, who became legendary. This is one of its first projects from 1954. We visited the property and went around the gardens, there were three really beautiful zones. And my wife told me, ‘I liked to photograph these gardens, they are so beautiful.’ But photographing gardens, very beautiful, is not what I do. My starting point is human behavior, so I had to think about something that was going to happen in the garden. I made up a kind of play. And the plays have three acts ».

In the first act – the image of the left – we see four people, two men and two women, talking to each other in a kind of crossroads. In the second act, the center, men are clearly to one side and women to the other, to confere – and each pair wears the same. Will they be double? In the third act, a man and a woman seek to orient themselves in the maze of orals.

«There are only two actors and four characters. One of the things that digital means allow us is to photograph the same person twice and put it in the same image. There is a reason for this. I will not explain it, but it is there.
The last panel has the subtitle ‘Expulsion’ – and has been suggested with relevance that it is a representation of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise. A 2017 work, therefore, which shows a 1954 garden that, in turn, refers to an episode of the Old Testament. Here we have perhaps the key to the title of the exhibition ‘Time Stands Still’ – ‘Time remains standing’. It is not just the technique of photography that ‘freezes’ a moment and preserves it for the future. It is as if many of Jeff Wall images sent for a time where there is no behind and ahead, past and future. And then they are no longer only windows, but also small capsules through which we can see a glimpse of eternity.