At the Crosswalk IX
Artist
Ian Wallace
(Canadian, born 1943)
Date2011
Mediumphotolaminate, acrylic on canvas
DimensionsOverall: 243.8 × 487.7 cm (96 × 192 in.)
Credit LineThe Mendel Art Gallery Collection at Remai Modern. Gift of the artist 2016.
Object number2016.12.a-d
Classificationspainting
On View
Not on viewIan Wallace is regarded as an important figure in what has been referred to as the “Vancouver School” a group of artists active from the 1960s to today, who developed different approaches to photoconceptualism. At the Crosswalk IX consists of four large panels hung tightly together so they appear as a single, monumental artwork. At either end are a man and woman (unidentified Vancouver art collectors) stepping off the curb at opposite sides of a city intersection. Two monochromatic painted canvases occupy the centre of the composition where the street should appear. At the Crosswalk, a series of works with the same title and format, was initiated in 1988 and will terminate with the tenth version. The interaction of the different image types—an unmediated encounter between photography and painting—suggests a host of possibilities. The idea of the intersection has been a potent metaphor for Wallace for years, both in the formal sense of the collage of very different media and as a kind of physical threshold found in the street.
