Jeff Wall

In his impressive analysis Stefan Banz examines how Jeff Wall uses camera, computer, actors and specialists to generate a visual performance that provokes epistemological questions in the viewer; illustrates how the artist – beyond avant-garde criteria – develops a sophisticated and engaging visual feel, which deals both with the everyday but also with the history of art; and explores meticulously how he reflects the role of the recipient in his compositions. In this sense, Banz shows with the eyes of an active observer how art has an inexhaustible metaphorical power for Wall, which enriches and upsets our visual concepts. And he also creates new, startling references between his photographic works and paintings by such different artists like Diego Velázquez, Jan Vermeer, Claude Monet, Frederic Remington, Hans Emmenegger, Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dalí.