Viewing Jeff Wall ‘Life in Pictures’ at White Cube

“Some subjects require the absence of colour”, Jeff Wall has said. “That lack, that absence, also creates a disturbance in how you perceive. I think that disturbance does something that the pictures, when they’re successful, do – which is to be almost more lifelike than life itself.”

Over thirty years working with photography as his preferred medium, the American artist has created dazzling, rich choreographed tableaux, mixing the language of cinema and the pointed verisimilitude of photography to create a style he calls ‘cinematographic’. This major survey – timed to make three decades since Wall joined White Cube – charts the evolution of this style and method through forty works and over three decades.

This show demonstrates Wall’s level of artistic and technical mastery of the medium, from the precise staging, lighting and storytelling of the scenes he sets up to the way he manipulates images in post-production. Displayed as radiant light boxes or monumental-scale prints, this is a thrilling romp through the influential artist’s ouevre. Catch it while you can.