Jeff Wall has always confessed his great admiration for painting, often mentioning Velázquez, Delacroix or Manet in his texts and perhaps it is no coincidence that his large format photographs share certain features with 19th century painting. However, his photography is not trying to compete with painting, but to establish a dialogue that allows them to coexist in a museum or gallery. The composition, light, position of the models and the chiaroscuro all take on their former importance but this time on a new support: photographic paper or the light box.

Each of the works presented in this exhibition are images from a different story. Something is happening in which one of them. They are not real events documented by the artist, but stories spectators must fill in for themselves. Not even the titles make specific reference to the action taking place but reflect the details of a given time or place. The way of telling these stories varies from one to another between the "microcosmos" and the "fragment" as the artist himself calls them. The "microcosmos" image contains all elements of the possible action. This is the case of "A Partial Account (of events taking place between the hours of 9:35 a.m. and 3:22 p.m., Tuesday, 21 January 1997" which contains not only an action but also the characters and the various relationships between them. In "Rear, 304 East 25 Ave., Vancouver, 9 May 1997, 1:14 & 1.17 p.m." a heroin addict is waiting anxiously somewhere in the suburbs of Vancouver. The photo also includes a scene from a later moment when the junkie holds out her hand to receive her fix.

The eloquence of the "fragment" lies in the absent elements. In "Office Hallway, Spring St., Los Angeles" there is only one character in the deserted corridor of an office but the presence of a briefcase and the effects of the light seem to reveal or foretell a previous or later action establishing some connection between the man and the object.