Ian Wallace: That ’70s Show
Ian Wallace An Attack on Literature I & II 1975 Detail Courtesy Catriona Jeffries Gallery
The pioneering Vancouver-based photoconceptualist Ian Wallace has recently added several distinctions to his already sterling artistic career. Following an acclaimed solo show of new works at the artist-run CSA Space in April, Wallace was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts’ prestigious $50,000 Molson Prize in June. Now, Catriona Jeffries Gallery takes a look back at a brief but prolific period in the artist’s career with a historical exhibition of 1970s photo montages, staged tableaux and early video pieces that explore the use of syntax and dramatic devices in conceptual art. The inclusion of large-scale photomurals, such as Hypnerotomachia (the Fire), and composite images like An Attack on Literature I & II, constructed from 12 separate photographs, attests to Wallace’s ongoing interest in the way meaning is accrued through a sequence of tableaux. Cropped of any useful geographical context, the montages read like storyboards for a series of experimental modernist films that were never made. Though the exhibition is firmly rooted in Wallace’s past work, a concurrent exhibition at Yvon Lambert Gallery in New York and an upcoming 2011 solo show scheduled for the Vancouver Art Gallery suggest that there is no better time to take a look back at Wallace’s complex oeuvre. (274 E 1 Ave, Vancouver BC)
Ian Wallace Hypnerotomachia (the Fire) 1977 Courtesy Catriona Jeffries Gallery
Ian Wallace Untitled 1969–70 Courtesy Catriona Jeffries Gallery
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