Rehearsing Reality: Constructing the Present

J e f f W a l l
I a n W a l l a c e

Madrid 2 6 . 0 2 . 2 6 – 0 2 . 0 5 . 2 6

Parra & Romero, exhibition: Rehearsing Reality: Constructing the Present (fig. 1)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: Rehearsing Reality: Constructing the Present (fig. 2)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: Rehearsing Reality: Constructing the Present (fig. 3)

Parra & Romero, exhibition: Rehearsing Reality: Constructing the Present (fig. 4)

@parraromero i n f o @ p a r r a - r o m e r o . c o m

P a r r a & R o m e r o © 2 0 2 6 A L L R I G H T S R E S E R V E D

Parra & Romero is pleased to present Rehearsing Reality: Constructing the Present, an exhibition bringing together Jeff Wall and Ian Wallace in a focused dialogue in Madrid. The exhibition highlights two seminal practices that emerged from Vancouver and have decisively shaped the international understanding of image-making since the late twentieth century, expanding the field between photography, painting, conceptual strategies, and the conditions of display.

Both Wall and Wallace have worked with the city not simply as subject matter, but as a testing ground where the social, the architectural, and the everyday become legible through constructed images. Their works operate in the productive tension between observation and staging, between the documentary impulse and the deliberate orchestration of the scene. In this sense, “rehearsal” becomes a method: a way of composing reality so that its structures of labour, class, visibility, and power can be seen and questioned.

Jeff Wall’s practice is internationally recognised for redefining the photographic picture through a complex relationship to cinema, painting, and the tableau tradition. His large-scale transparencies and photographic works, often developed through carefully directed production, insist on the image as a site where the present is built, not merely recorded. Ian Wallace, a key figure of the Vancouver School, has consistently explored the ideological and material conditions of representation, combining photography with painterly and conceptual frameworks that foreground the role of the image in public space.

Rehearsing Reality: Constructing the Present is conceived as a conversation across these approaches, bringing together works that articulate different distances to the city and to the figure, and different modes of “construction” as an aesthetic and political decision. The exhibition offers a precise view into the ways both artists have contributed to a critical visual language for the contemporary world— one in which images do not simply reflect the present, but actively participate in its formation.

JEFF WALL
Born in 1946 in Vancouver, Canada, where he lives and works.

Jeff Wall is one of the most influential artists of his generation. His work is held in leading museum collections and worldwide retrospective and solo exhibitions including at Glenstone, Maryland (2021); Economou Collection, Athens (2019); Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany, touring to Mudam Luxembourg (2018); Pérez Art Museum, Miami (2015); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, touring to Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (2014–15); Art Gallery of Western Australia, touring to National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2012–13); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany (2013); Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain (2011); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2008); The Museum of Modern Art, New York touring to The Art Institute of Chicago and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2007); and Tate Modern, London touring to Schaulager, Basel, Switzerland (2005). Group exhibitions include 5th Shanghai Biennale (2004); Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002); 12th Biennale of Sydney (2000); 24th Bienal de São Paulo (1998); and Documenta 10, Kassel, Germany (1997).

IAN WALLACE
Born in 1943 in Shoreham, England. Lives and works in Vancouver.

A seminal figure in the development of post-conceptual and photoconceptual art, Wallace has been influential not only through his artistic practice but also through his writing and teaching, including at the University of British Columbia and the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. He has presented numerous international solo exhibitions, including at West Vancouver Art Museum (2024); Parra & Romero, Ibiza (2023) and Madrid (2019); Galerie Greta Meert, Brussels (2022); Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver (2021); the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2015); Vancouver Art Gallery (2012, and earlier presentations in 1988–89 and 1979); The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2010); as well as the multi-venue project A Literature of Images at Kunsthalle Zürich, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, and Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2008). Earlier solo presentations include exhibitions at Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver, and touring presentations at Sprengel Museum, Hannover, and Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden (1995–1998). Wallace has also been included in major group exhibitions internationally, including at Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2015); CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2014); Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin (2010); Musée national d’art moderne, Paris (2006); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2004); and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1995), among others. Wallace has received numerous honours, including the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, and has been appointed Officer of the Order of Canada.