Room 12

Light filters through leaves and rebounds from glass windows to create intriguing reflections, illuminating interior and exterior spaces with equal and impossible radiance. Wall's subtle and complex manipulation of light is just one aspect brought to the fore in this final selection that revisits many of his enduring themes and preoccupations.

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A Sunflower 1995
Transparency in lightbox 740 x 900 mm
Private collection. Courtesy Martin Schwander A&E Advisory Services, Basel
Documentary photograph
© The artist

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Tattoos and Shadows 2000
Transparency in lightbox 1955 x 2550 mm
Courtesy the artist
Cinematographic photograph
© The artist

Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona 1999

The subject of Morning Cleaning is an iconic example of modernist architecture, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's pavilion for the International Exhibition of 1929, held in Barcelona. The pavilion was reconstructed in the 1980s and is now permanently open to the public. Wall was interested in the labour required to maintain the brilliance and transparency of the building, with its signature glass walls and marble surfaces. We see the pavilion's cleaner at work early in the morning before the building opens – another example of the artist's interest in activities which are normally unseen or overlooked.

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Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona 1999
Transparency in lightbox 1807 x 3510 mm
Collection of the artist, on permanent loan to the Museum f&uulm;r Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main
Cinematographic photograph
© The artist

A View From an Apartment 2004-5

This is Wall's most recent work. It was photographed between May 2004 and March 2005 in an apartment specially rented for the purpose. Wall says he wanted to make a picture of an interior that included a view, something he had not done before. He asked one of the women in the picture to furnish the apartment and to live in it as if it were her own. Shooting occurred at various points during this time and the resulting photographs were then digitally combined. With A view from an apartment Wall achieves a remarkable synthesis of a number of his preoccupations: a commonplace interior opens onto an urban panorama; documentary material is treated with cinematographic dynamism; the everyday is heightened through composition and the effects of light; and a narrative is suggested but left incomplete.

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A view from an apartment 2004–2005
Transparency in lightbox 1670 x 2440 mm
Collection of the artist. Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
Cinematographic photograph
© The artist