Wrestling with a Titan of the Vancouver School

Before online commenters jump in with both feet, let me clarify. I’m not talking about all men. I’m referring to a fair number who think that everyone, women especially, ought to find their arcane interest in things like British train stations or the Swedish banking system irresistible.

There is a certain segment of the male population that never learned to read social cues. And they don’t realize they’re boring everyone to absolute tears.

I must admit that I’ve never found the creative work of the Vancouver School photo conceptualists all that interesting. Technically, the work is accomplished, but I rarely have an emotional reaction to it.

An exhibition of Vancouver School photographer Jeff Wall’s work, recently opened at the West Vancouver Art Museum, resurfaced the idea that sometimes men aren’t nearly as interesting as they think they are.

Called Jeff Wall: Inside , the title of the show might imply a collection of images drawn from colonoscopy or other invasive medical procedures. Perhaps a new direction for the artist! Alas it’s the usual. The gallery is filled with wall-mounted light boxes containing elaborately staged large-scale images. Their mini narratives often contain moments caught in time, as though they were suspended in amber.

Inside is drawn from the previous three decades of Wall’s work. Given the constraints of the gallery (it’s not a large space), the show is on the smaller side, consisting of a dozen images. Many of these are art-directed within an inch of their high-gloss lives. The experience of taking in Wall’s work is an extended series of speculations. Something along the lines of, “Well, what happens next?”

In the Legion (2022), a convergence of the mundane and the deeply odd, is a case in point. It’s a common motif in Wall’s work.

In Legion , old timers sit amidst a motley assortment of tables nursing beers, while in the centre of the frame, a man is caught in mid-backflip. None of the patrons in the place seem surprised or even much affected by this display.

In isolation, the exchange between audience and image is interesting enough. But when the same exchange is repeated multiple times, something else starts to emerge.

I noticed it first as a kind of vague irritation. Which is an emotional reaction, I guess, but perhaps not the one that the artist intended.

Is it simply that a certain amount of work is required on the part of the viewer to partake of these images? Or it is something else? That’s where I get stuck, because I’m not sure why this give-and-take bugs me so much.

Delving into Wall’s history might hold some answers. There is a clinical aspect, a dissection of all the many small details, that adds depth and heft. They also offer clues as to what a viewer may wish to take away with them.

A couple of the images in Jeff Wall: Inside , commissioned by international organizations and cultural centres, haven’t been seen before in Vancouver.

Informant: An occurrence not described in chapter 6, part 3 of Últimas tardes con Teresa by Juan Marsé , commissioned by the City of Barcelona, is one example.