Jeff Wall at Marian Goodman

Five of eight works (all dated 2003) in Jeff Wall's recent exhibition of color transparencies mounted on lightboxes seemed more concerned with the immediacy of circumstances than with the composed, labor-intensive mise-en-scenes for which he is best known. Though he is still far from shooting from the hip, the gap between real-time image-making and the concentrated nature of his typical practice has diminished, if only for this exhibition. Wall invites readings of the new works suggested by their quasi-documentary nature, without exception enhanced by the daylike illumination of his signature lightboxes on which they are presented.

The five works, smaller than usual, are based on happenstance, as Wall's attention focuses on the details of places and events encountered in the course of day-to-day life--a kind of exaltation of the mysteries found in ordinary things. The treatment of a round hole jigged through the siding of a wood-frame structure holds interest for its simplicity and life scale. The details of the 19-by-22-inch Pipe Opening include broad brushstrokes of whitewash on the clapboard siding; strips of dark-stained molding create a wedge between the boards and the roofing material at the picture's lower edge. An arrow penciled on the wall points toward the hole, and through some ordinary miracle of light, the space between outer and inner wall is illuminated with burnished gold and red.

Wall locates baroque darkness in the corner of a much-used workroom in the 3-by-4-foot Staining bench, furniture manufacturer's, Vancouver. Cans are stacked on a bench covered with rags and pooling stain; more cans, along with a much-splattered portable fan, are stashed below. What appears to be a room beyond is visible through a narrow vertical opening in one wall. In a larger transparency, A wall in a former bakery looks like an abandoned abattoir, dripping with rivulets of bloodlike oil, almost tactile on the lightbox's surface. The sinister Bloodstained Garment focuses on reddened hospital apparel cast aside on an asphalt drive near a section of cyclone fencing.

Two of the largest works are linked to Wall's elaborately constructed image The Flooded Grave (1998-2000), not included in this exhibition, whose subject is a grave brimming with marine life and flowers. Boys cutting through a hedge, Vancouver reenacts an event Wall witnessed during the shooting of Grave, in which two turbaned Sikh adolescents took a shortcut through the graveyard. The other image, its very long title tells us, shows an excavation in British Columbia. An anthropologist and his assistant cooperated with Wall by continuing their work, surrounded by forest and the clutter of their task. According to the gallery's press release, the shoot lasted three weeks--an exceptional length, particularly in the context of the other images in this show. The final image, the result of digital editing, privileges no one element above another in its clarity and depth of field.

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