The Easel

22nd November 2021

In Jeff Wall’s photographs, it’s all about the details. But are they important?

Michael Kimmelman | The Washington Post | 10th November 2021

Wall is credited with helping photography transcend its status as “a problematic subset of art.” Intrigued by artifice, he decided to create tableaux – near-documentary re-creations. These images have little details seemingly incongruent with the ‘face-value’ story. Once this is noticed, the “documentary value” of the image “collapses like a house of cards … [unlike a movie] Wall’s photographs seem stolen from a narrative timeline with no backstory, or denouement in the offing.”

9th November 2021

Inside Glenn Ligon’s Groundbreaking Solo Show at Hauser & Wirth

Judd Tully | Avenue | 2nd November 2021

Ligon enjoys “Olympian” status among contemporary American artists. Stenciled text paintings have, for decades, been his calling card. They carry overt political content – the erasure of African Americans in their society. But they are more, cleverly illustrating the slipperiness of language and the “tug-of-war between pure abstraction and dusty figuration”. A new show features more ambiguous text works. Don’t ask Ligon for an explanation, though – his job, he says, is just to ask “good questions”.

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