Time Stands Still. Photographs, 1980–2023 by Jeff Wall at MAAT

One of the most extensive exhibitions to date on the work of one of the biggest names on the international visual arts scene in recent decades. It is also the artist's first solo exhibition in Portugal.

Overview

The exhibition brings together more than 60 works, which occupy the entire MAAT Gallery and reflect the various themes that the artist has favoured throughout his career: scenes from everyday life, tensions and dramas inherent to modern and contemporary societies, such as loneliness, poverty, alienation, urban violence, abandonment and social exclusion. Situations and scenarios witnessed, imagined or inspired by art history or literary descriptions. They are images that have been previously thought out, planned and then executed, like the work of a painter or film director. As the artist says, "The poetics or the ‘productivity’ of my work has been in the stagecraft and pictorial composition – what I call ‘cinematography.’ This, I hope, makes it evident that the theme has been subjectivised, has been depicted, reconfigured according to my feelings and literacy."