Curated by Kerry Brougher

For almsot two decades, Jeff Wall has specialized in elaborately staged tableaux ranging in content from chance events to fantastic occurrences; closer examination reveals multilayered art-historical and pop-cultural references. In A Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hokusai), swirling paper echoes the curving lines of Japanese prints; Giant reads as a kind of B-movie still, showing an enormous naked woman poised on a library staircase. Wall’s photomurals represent his ongoing attempt to find a new kind of vernacular for contemporary photography (and by extension, the project of contemporary artmaking)—one that pits the monumental painting of the past against the seamlessness and transparency that comprise the artist’s signature style. Wall’s first retrospective in the States, curated by Kerry Brougher (from Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art) brings together thirty of the artist’s best-known large-scale works since 1978. 2/20—5/11; travels to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 7/13—10/5, and the Art Tower, Mito, Japan, 12/13—3/22/98.

— Mark Van de Walle