Ian Wallace — Magazine Piece 1969 — 2014 — Yvon Lambert Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 30 → February 28, 2014

In his new section On paper, Yvon Lambert re-activates one of Ian Wallace’s most iconic work Magazine Piece from January 30th to March 8th 2014.

Influential figure of the photographic and conceptual art scene since 1965, Ian Wallace has achieved international recognition with his large scale works in which photography dialogues with monochrome painting.

Created in 1970 using pages of Look, Magazine Piece confronts a conceptual approach with a mass media editorial production. The artist’s display releases the images’ immediacy from for their traditional ephemeral narration. The magazine is raised to the status of Art and acquires the new function of cultural mediator. Side by side, every front pages of the magazine is stripped of its first signification. The works hence becomes a critical tool of the society and gives ride to a new possible understanding of the image.

Formally, Magazine Piece provides a critical perspective to postmodern aesthetic, especially to collage and geometric abstraction. Although he visually refers to a grid abstract structure, pointed out by the quasi-narrative expression of the linearity of the tape, the possible blank space is being left to the chance of the chosen magazine number pages. Inspired by Mallarmé’s famous roll of dice, the unexpected creates an original signification to the audience. The raw magazine pages, where a diversity of typos, colours and visuals meets, come together to create a semiotic combination close to a poetical composition.