Jeff Wall, In front of a nightclub, 2006. Transparency in light box. Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Katherine S. Schamberg by exchange, 2006.30.a–c, Band & crowd, 2011. Lightjet Print. Jeff Wall Photographs 1984–2023, installation view, MOCA Toronto, 2025. Photo: LF Documentation. © Jeff Wall.

Jeff Wall Photographs 1984–2023, opening at MOCA Toronto on October 19, is a monumental homecoming for a visionary Canadian artist. Spanning all three floors of the museum, this is Wall’s first major Canadian exhibition in more than 25 years, and his first in Toronto in 35. For those who have only encountered the Vancouver photoconceptualist’s work online or in books, this is an event not to be missed. Being surrounded by Wall’s works in person—printed so large you feel you can almost walk inside them—is the closest thing to seeing the world through his eyes.

Wall is one of the most influential living artists to come out of Canada and is best known for his enormous light box transparencies that blur the line between authenticity and artifice. Since the 1960s, he’s expanded what photography can be, pushing its boundaries through scale, colour, and careful construction. His pictures often look spontaneous, but they’re the result of painstaking planning, staging, and composition. With close, committed study, each work slowly gives up its secrets.

Portrait of Jeff Wall by Andrew Querner

This exhibition, curated by MOCA executive director and CEO Kathleen Bartels, whom Wall has known for nearly two decades, focuses on images composed in Canada. It examines how photography has shaped the country’s cultural identity over the past 40 years. Themes of social tension, everyday dignity, and the beauty that hides inside ordinary moments run throughout. No matter how disturbing or banal the subject matter—there are flooded graves and rain-filled suitcases, gory scenes of war and fantastical vampire picnics, picturesque vistas and landscapes marred by neglect—each tableau is treated with the same degree of veneration.

On the first floor, visitors are greeted by Children, 1988, a group of nine circular light box portraits of kids mounted high on the walls. Set against cloudy skies, the children appear almost divine, like tiny gods observing from above. On the upper two floors, the works are grouped more by theme than chronology: a mix of luminous light boxes from the 1980s, black-and-white images from the 1990s, and colour inkjet prints from the 2000s.

Jeff Wall, In front of a nightclub, 2006. Transparency in light box. Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Katherine S. Schamberg by exchange, 2006.30.a–c, Band & crowd, 2011. Lightjet Print. Jeff Wall Photographs 1984–2023, installation view, MOCA Toronto, 2025. Photo: LF Documentation. © Jeff Wall.

Scale plays a starring role throughout. Works such as Passerby, 1996, a gelatin silver photograph that flickers with eerie tension, stop viewers in their tracks and pull them in. Luckily, MOCA’s freight elevator (a relic from its days as an automotive parts factory) was up to the challenge.

At the press preview, Wall was stationed behind a partition wall among photos of music and performance. In a classic case of art and life’s eternal dance of mimicry, journalists milled around him in a manner similar to the figures in the artwork before them, In Front of a Nightclub, 2006. One asked him about how much of the scene was real or staged, to which he returned his usual line: “That’s classified information.”

Jeff Wall, The Flooded Grave, 1998–2000. Transparency in light box. Peas and Sauce, 1999. Transparency in light box. Jeff Wall Photographs 1984–2023, installation view, MOCA Toronto, 2025. Photo: LF Documentation. © Jeff Wall.

Jeff Wall, Actor in two roles, 2020. Two inkjet prints, Jeff Wall Photographs 1984–2023, installation view, MOCA Toronto, 2025. Photo: LF Documentation. © Jeff Wall.

Wall was an early adopter of digital manipulation in his photography and has used it to achieve images that would be impossible otherwise. If he were starting out as an artist now, would he embrace AI as a new technology? “It doesn’t interest me,” he said. “It uses photographs, but it’s not photography, and I am a photographer. I’m sure something will come of it for other people, but what those people must like to do is recombine what already exists. But art is always about results. If someone’s going to get results that are artistically credible and good, then they will. There’s no reason to rule that out. You can’t predict what the next good artwork will look like.”

Jeff Wall, Echo Park, 2023. Inkjet print. I giardini/ The Gardens Appunto / Complaint, Disappunto / Denial, Diffida / Expulsion order, 2017. Three inkjet prints. Jeff Wall Photographs 1984–2023, installation view, MOCA Toronto, 2025. Photo: LF Documentation. © Jeff Wall.

Jeff Wall Photographs 1984–2023 runs to March 22, 2026, and features a major new hardcover publication, accompanied by essays from Bartels, Robert Enright, and Meeka Walsh. For Canadians, it’s a rare chance to see one of the country’s defining artists, on his own terms, at full scale.

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