Ian Wallace: Museum Works

4 September 2010 – 23 January 2011

  • Ian Wallace, The Cinema Museum, Lodz, Poland, 1990-91,

Two major, multi-panel paintings by Ian Wallace, both drawn from the MacKenzie’s permanent collection, are featured in this exhibition, which highlights the artist’s ongoing fascination with the museum as social site and image repository. The paintings form a counterpoint to the film-inspired works on display in the concurrent exhibition Ian Wallace: Masculin/Féminin.

There is a distinctly cinematic quality to In the Museum (the Musée d’Orsay series) (1988). Its four, panoramic panels move from long shot to close up, taking the viewer from a tree-lined Parisian boulevard, to the Musée d’Orsay’s cavernous halls, to a detail of a painting–Maximilien Luce’s documentation of street carnage after the fall of the Paris Commune in 1871.

The second painting, The Cinema Museum, Lodz, Poland (1990-91), offers two related views of an interior littered with old posters, props and film equipment. As in Masculin/Féminin, a concern with how images are produced and documented comes to the fore.

Timothy Long, Head Curator
 
A permanent collection exhibition organized by the MacKenzie Art Gallery with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the City of Regina Arts Commission.
 
Image: Ian Wallace, The Cinema Museum, Lodz, Poland, 1990-91, photolaminate with acrylic on canvas diptych: 152 x 304 cm (overall).
 
Collection of the MacKenzie Art Gallery, gift of the artist in memory of Mr. G.E. Richmond.