The Jeff Wall Collection (On Sale) “It’s like the curate’s egg”
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The exhibition reveals, each day of a calendar month corresponding to the opening days of the Hot Wheels gallery in London, a distinct action carried out by curator and essayist Pierre Bal-Blanc since 1988, under the aegis of Jeff Wall Production.
The artifacts resulting from these interventions (lectures, performances, exhibitions, publications, etc.) are repurposed through their commercialization by the gallery. Rather than mere archival documents, these pieces offer the possibility of reenacting the original actions in a renewed form.
New interventions, linked to the context or temporality of the exhibition, punctuate the daily program. The expression “It’s like the curate’s egg” refers to the building where Franco-British illustrator George du Maurier once lived, who popularized the phrase in the press, and which now houses the exhibition. A commemorative “Blue Plaque” installed on the gallery’s façade is reinterpreted within the space.
During the exhibition, specifically between March 12 and 29, around ten works will be progressively displayed, referencing paintings by Mutlu Cerkez created in the 1990s. These works were originally dated forward with the intention of an eventual reproduction in March 2025—an intention that, due to Cerkez’s early death, was never realized. This resynchronization offers a new reading of the work of the Turkish-Cypriot-Australian artist and his influence, following an approach previously explored in I GOT UP by On Kawara in a past Jeff Wall Production project at the Hot Wheels gallery in Athens.
Jeff Wall Production aims to rethink modes of recognition by moving beyond the necessity of an artist’s status to legitimize its actions. Since 1988, this approach has paved the way for new forms of authority, whose significance has become even more evident in the age of artificial intelligence.