Vancouver Art Gallery acquires 2 works by Jeff Wall

01.02.2008 21:17 Arts - Source: cbc.ca

The Vancouver Art Gallery has bought two major works by world-renowned Canadian photographer Jeff Wall.

The acquisition of Concrete ball, 2002, and War game, 2007, brings to nine the number of Wall's works in the Vancouver gallery's collection.

Wall, who works out of a Vancouver studio, is best known for his large-scale back-lit cibachrome photographs and his writing about art history.

"His work as an artist, writer and teacher has had a major impact on the contemporary art world and his art is held in high esteem and sought after by major contemporary art institutions, collectors and private galleries worldwide," Kathleen Bartels, director of the Vancouver Art Gallery, said in a statement Friday.

"With this acquisition, the Vancouver Art Gallery now has one of the largest public collections of Jeff Wall's work in the world."

Concrete ball, 2002 is a backlit colour transparency mounted in a lightbox of a concrete ball on a pedestal that marks the entrance to a public park near Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The shot, taken on typically rainy day, is a view of a commonplace object that evokes a particular place and time in the city.

War game, 2007, part of a new series of black and white photographs, is a view of boys playing with toy guns in a vacant lot of grass and gravel.

Other works by Wall in the gallery's collection include Backpack, 1981-1982, Bad Goods, 1985, Outburst, 1989 and Pine on the Corner, 1990, which was recently displayed in Artists' Choice, an exhibit that closed in January.

The gallery plans to exhibit the full collection later this year. The two new works were acquired with the help of a grant from the Audain Foundation, a Vancouver philanthropic organization.

Wall, whose work has been exhibited at galleries such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Tate Modern in London, has played an important role in re-establishing photography as a significant art form.

Wall himself helped select the works to complement works already in the gallery's collection, the gallery said in its statement.

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