Join us for a talk given by celebrated Canadian artist Jeff Wall, exploring over four decades of his pioneering photographic work.
This presentation offers a unique opportunity to hear directly from one of contemporary art’s most influential figures, illuminating the ideas and methods behind the works on view at MOCA Toronto in Jeff Wall Photographs 1984–2023, the artist’s first major Canadian survey of his work in over 25 years.
About the Artist
Born in 1946, Jeff Wall has been involved in artistic creation since his childhood in Vancouver. Initially engaged with drawing and painting, Wall took up photography in the late 1960s. After a lengthy period of study and artistic experimentation, Wall began making the photographic art for which he is now renowned in 1977. Wall lives in Vancouver and Los Angeles.
Wall has exhibited his photographs internationally for the past forty years including selections in four Documentas, biennales in Venice, São Paulo, Sydney, and Moscow, and solo exhibitions organized by many of the most prestigious art institutions in the world such as Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, the Glenstone Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, Kunsthalle Mannheim, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts. In 2024–25 solo presentations of the artist’s work were featured at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona, White Cube, London, Gagosian, New York, and the Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology, Lisbon. In Canada solo exhibitions have been organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, Toronto, and Canton–sardine, Vancouver.
Wall is acknowledged as one of the most accomplished artist-writers of his generation. His writings range across a variety of topics, from theoretical propositions on photography and art to essays on fellow contemporary artists and major art-historical figures. Wall’s critical writing has been published on many occasions and in several languages. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and his art is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Glenstone Museum, Schaulager, the Centre Pompidou, the National Gallery of Canada, Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Wall has received numerous awards for his photographic works of art, including the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography in 2002, the Roswitha Haftmann-Preis in 2003, and the Audain Prize for the Visual Arts in 2008.
