Catriona Jeffries

Ian Wallace
Surface / Structure / Street: Works 1986–2014
September 18–November 7, 2026

The exhibition opens Thursday, September 17, 6–8pm

A picture begins and ends with its frame. Ian Wallace has spent six decades investigating the ways in which frames condition the perception of their contents. The artist’s work—which typically brings verité photography and minimalist painting strategies together on stretched canvas surfaces—explores the frame as an alternatingly opaque or transparent aspect of an image, structuring a “view through a window into a world in which the illusory image act[s] as a simulation of an imaginary space and subject.”¹

But in the time of modernity, these illusory qualities became suspect, and representations were soon analyzed according to their constituent formal elements. Before long, the picture plane itself became an object of scrutiny, and its structural supports were similarly subjected to analysis and critique. Inevitably, this dissection parceled away any distinction between the form and content of an image, instead requiring representations to be considered within a web of infrastructural conditions and social relations. At the same time, society itself was becoming increasingly abstract, as dispersed networks and digital interfaces actualized simulatory spaces and elided traditional pictorial description.

Wallace notes that this arc of art history, whereby representations oscillated between material and metaphoric realities, led him to reconsider the expressive potential of painting as a model for photography. “When the self-reflexive aesthetic issues implicit in modernist abstract painting are applied to photography, the question of framing becomes paramount.”²

In the works on view in Surface / Structure / Street: Works 1986–2014, we are given pictorial examples of frames represented by bare canvas stretchers, skyscrapers with steel skeletons, and multicellular glass grids, as well as the delineations of architectural sightlines, traffic lines, and city skylines, all underscored by Wallace’s characteristic montage of images surrounded by blocks of colour on canvas.

When the framework is complete, it becomes a support structure for the picture plane. We see the wooden stretchers sheathed in canvas, the skeletal buildings clad in glass. The frame is not just a pictorial crop, but the delineating condition for its imaginary space and subject.

Wallace writes that “the wall functions as a screen for a sequence of pictures and thus constructs what is, in effect, a text of images.”³ The buildings of New York, Paris, and Los Angeles which appear throughout this exhibition rise as walls par excellence—the windows that frame godlike views of the surrounding metropolises are impenetrable from the outside. What is written upon their surfaces? What can be read within the picture frame of a city skyline? Prior bodies of work focused on New York’s Times Square or Toronto’s Financial District as sites in which the architecture—either spectacularly overloaded in advertisements, or so sleek and mirrorlike as to become completely opaque—functioned as metonymic glimpses of modernism, capitalism, and the social superstructure which defines our contemporary condition. We can see urban architecture function as more than a site for shelter or business, becoming an imagistic text that conveys and withholds in equal measure. “The image of the street provides a metaphor for society at large, a framework or support for a political interpretation of pictorial material.”⁴

The street is the ground condition for these towers: the point of passage between them and the commonplace beyond. Yet in Clayoquot Protest (August 9, 1993) (1993), a logging road replaces the street as a theatre of public action.

“The political theme of Clayoquot Protest concerns above all the relation of the individual to the superstructure. … I have also explored this theme in a series of works titled My Heroes in the Streets, in which individuals [specifically artists] are shown as autonomous but alienated subjects immersed in the urban environment. In contrast, Clayoquot Protest shows individuals engaged in collective, communicative action in order to protect the natural environment from devastation.”⁵

Wallace emphasizes that this situation represents a moment when the order of the day is upset, as gathered protestors choose ethical action over lawful status quo. The political content here is self-evident, just as the texts of the protestor’s signs remain relevant decades later. But what of the collectives depicted elsewhere in his work, those gathered on construction sites, in museum galleries, or on street corners? The commuter, like the skyscraper, is too multivalent to be defined by their function alone. We glean only their general participation in the collective project of society, commuting along the crooked path of historical progress.

But the depiction of artists in My Heroes in the Streets, where figures differentiate themselves from the anonymity of daily street life, seems to be in antagonism to the depiction of artworks in Mies Pavilion Barcelona II (2009), Royal Academy Courtyard (2008), and Abstract Composition (La Défense, Paris) I–III (2011), where art resembles the opaque facades that clad the storehouses of capital. The bare wooden stretchers of In the Studio (With Canvas) I–V (2014), surrounded by swatches that evoke the tactility of painted surfaces, allow us to perceive something of the creative act, not yet settled into the shape of a public monument or disregarded artifact. In these instances, the imaginary space of a picture is imaginary in the sense of inviting, maybe even inspiring, and not yet wholly ideological.

He writes that, “[i]f we accept that history is constructed not just from events in themselves but also how they are presented as images and disseminated as beliefs which operate in the arena of mass spectatorship, a fully-conceived work would thus need to critique the form and function of these images.”⁶

Wallace’s decision to work at scale on canvas, incorporating documentary photography as a constituent but not singular element of the picture, is an attempt to create “history paintings” from within the so-called post-historical tradition of modernist picture-making. Therefore, these works emphasize the material conditions of the support and frame alongside the depicted subjected matter in order to capture—even synecdochally—the conditions of modern life. Wallace’s histories begin with himself, his peers, and local events illustrating the autonomous but alienated shape of the present.

For Wallace, it is not just that laying bare the structure of a picture—or the realpolitik of society—leads to a more honest (that is, less deceitful) kind of representation. It’s that the structure is already embedded within the picture plane, and art does not necessarily illustrate ideas as much as it “tunes the eye to the visual complexity of everyday life.”⁷

1. Ian Wallace, “The Pictorial Equation and Its mise en abyme”, 2017.
2. Ibid.
3. Wallace, “Notes on Supports and Surfaces: Canvas, Wall, Page, Table, Floor, Street”, 2017.
4. Ibid.
5. Wallace, “Clayoquot Protest (August 9, 1993)” in Clayoquot Protest (August 9, 1993), ed. Helga Pakasaar, Art Gallery of Windsor, 1997.
6. Ibid.
7. Ian Wallace and Josh Thorpe, “Rewind: Fragments of a Conversation” in Ian Wallace: The Economy of the Image, ed. Gregory Burke, The Power Plant, Toronto, 2010.

Ian Wallace
Surface / Structure / Street: Works 1986–2014
September 18–November 7, 2026

Ian Wallace

VANCOUVER

Highlights from the Collection
April 1, 2026–January 6, 2030
Vancouver Art Gallery

Platforms: The Teachers Among Us
May 4, 2026–
City of Vancouver

Surface / Structure / Street: Works 1986–2014
September 17–November 7, 2026
Catriona Jeffries

—

CANADA

Picture Space
May 30–November 1, 2026
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

*PRESS*
The Tyee

Geoffrey Farmer

VANCOUVER

Highlights from the Collection
April 1, 2026–January 6, 2030
Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada

—

CANADA

COLLAGE
July 17–October 31, 2026
Nelson Museum

*PRESS*
The Tyee

Duane Linklater

USA

2026 Annual Exhibition
June 27–November 1, 2026
The Campus, Hudson

—

CZECH REPUBLIC

Crested/mâcistan: Tanya Lukin Linklater and Duane Linklater
October 1, 2026–January 10, 2027
Rudolfinum, Prague

*PRESS*
Something Curated
Flash Art
Hyperallergic
Arts.Columbia.edu
Forbes
Windspeaker
Screen Slate
MOMUS

Janice Kerbel

The Hospital Threshold
June 27–September 28, 2026
Cubitt, London

—

GERMANY

Janice Kerbel
September 4–November 7, 2026
Karin Guenther, Hamburg

Chukwudubem Ukaigwe

CANADA

As Loud as Freedom
September 17–October 4, 2026
918 Bathurst Centre for Culture, Arts, Media and Education, Toronto

Sites of Agency: Studio Photography
December 11, 2026–March 21, 2027
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Elizabeth McIntosh

CANADA

The Shape of Shape
October 15, 2026–January 10, 2027
Art Gallery of Grande Prairie

Devon Knowles

CANADA

Haunting the Undermined Zone
October 31, 2026–January 16, 2026
Nanaimo Art Gallery

We are pleased to welcome visitors Wednesday–Saturday, 12–5pm

Office hours Tuesday–Friday, 9am–5pm

Wheelchair entrance is available

950 East Cordova Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
V6A 1M6 Canada

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gallery@catrionajeffries.com
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Since 1994, Catriona Jeffries has garnered international recognition for the work of its artists and its esteemed exhibition program. The gallery began through an engagement with Vancouver’s photoconceptual histories and has since expanded to represent artists who are making significant contributions to Indigenous art discourses, materially centred sculpture practices, strategies in media theory and poetics, and diverse approaches to painting. By maintaining dialogues with artists, writers, curators, museums, and private collections, Catriona Jeffries continues to generate projects that place the work of gallery artists within new historical trajectories and international contexts. Through an expanded practice of research and exhibition-making, the gallery remains committed to fostering meaningful and global conversations in contemporary art.

Catriona Jeffries Founder, Director
Lauren Lavery Associate Director
Steven Cottingham Visuals and Communications
Wakana Shimamura Exhibitions Coordinator and Registrar
Neil Chung Preparator
Paul Dhaliwal Finance
Rachel Topham Photography Documentation
Scott Ponik Design
Alex Mahan Web Development

Exhibition History

Elizabeth McIntosh
LEGGS
May 22–July 4, 2026

Chukwudubem Ukaigwe
Another Octave Higher
March 27–May 9, 2026

Brian Jungen, Janice Kerbel, Jeremy Borsos, Liz Magor, Steven Cottingham
Arrows
January 30–March 14, 2026

Eli Bornowsky, Jessica Stockholder
is a knot helpful
October 31–December 13, 2025

Ceal Floyer, Adam Shiu-Yang Shaw, Ron Terada, Ian Wallace
Still
September 6–October 18, 2025

Rebecca Brewer and Veit Laurent Kurz
Locus Amoenus: Extinct Flame
July 9–30, 2025

Ron Terada
You Have Left the American Sector
May 1–June 14, 2025

Liz Magor
Arrange Your Face
April 26–June 28, 2025

Nairy Baghramian, Matt Browning, James Carl, Devon Knowles, Clémence de La Tour du Pin, Liz Larner, Christina Mackie, Liz Magor, Ellen Neel, Jessica Stockholder
Slow Looking
February 15–April 5, 2025

Abbas Akhavan, Rochelle Goldberg
Disembody
November 30, 2024–January 25, 2025

Valérie Blass
When I feel shy
September 19–November 16, 2024

Sonya Kelliher-Combs
remnant
September 19–November 16, 2024

Brian Jungen
Flagpole
April 17, 2024–2025

Duane Linklater
cache
April 6–June 28, 2024

Andrea Carlson, Chukwudubem Ukaigwe, Eli Bornowsky
No Exit
February 1–March 16, 2024

Elizabeth McIntosh
Real Relationships
December 1, 2023–January 20, 2024

Ron Terada
BBQ Beer Freedom
September 28–November 18, 2023

Judy Radul, Andrew Yong Hoon Lee, Steven Cottingham
Where the echoes cannot end
September 15, 2023

Steven Cottingham
Chain–link
July 21, 2023

Brenda Draney
Unfinished Business
May 26–July 8, 2023

Damian Moppett
Half Life
March 24–May 6, 2023

Rebecca Brewer
Eidetic Cloud
January 27–March 11, 2023

Tanya Lukin Linklater
breath ,’ echo
November 12, 2022–January 7, 2023

Jerry Pethick
‘How specialized are our interpretations of the world?’
September 16–October 29, 2022

Janice Kerbel
Speech! Fight!
Speech! Fight!
May 28–June 25, 2022

Valérie Blass, Laurie Kang, Christina Mackie, Liz Magor
Do Redo Repeat
March 19–May 7, 2022

Brenda Draney, Tanya Lukin Linklater
The best stories I know come from late night car rides or kitchen tables.
January 29–March 5, 2022

Raymond Boisjoly
🕸Some Number of Things🕸
November 6–December 18, 2021

Abbas Akhavan, Geoffrey Farmer, Rochelle Goldberg, Kapwani Kiwanga, Duane Linklater
Unseeable
Sept 18–Oct 23, 2021

Charmian Johnson
May 29–July 3, 2021

Ian Wallace
In the Museum
April 10–May 22, 2021

Damian Moppett
Vignettes
February 13–March 27, 2021

Liz Magor
Downer
December 5, 2020–January 30, 2021

Duane Linklater
primaryuse
October 24–November 21, 2020

Elizabeth McIntosh
Mom or Mother
September 12–October 10, 2020

Valérie Blass
La poudre aux yeux: Of smoke in mirrors
May 23–June 27, 2020

Ashes Withyman
Some kind of doctor receiving thunder
February 8–March 14, 2020

Abbas Akhavan
They asked the fox, “Who is your witness?”
He said, “My tail.”
November 23, 2019–January 18, 2020

Christina Mackie
September 21–November 2, 2019

Rochelle Goldberg
May 25–July 20, 2019
gatekeepers

Abbas Akhavan, Valérie Blass, Raymond Boisjoly, Rebecca Brewer, Trisha Brown and Trisha Brown Dance Company, Chris Burden, Raven Chacon, Geoffrey Farmer, Hanne Darboven, Marcel Duchamp, Kasper Feyrer, Alex Frost, Cynthia Girard-Renard, Rochelle Goldberg, Dan Graham, Brian Jungen, On Kawara, Janice Kerbel, Christine Sun Kim, Duane Linklater, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Christina Mackie, Myfanwy MacLeod, Liz Magor, Elizabeth McIntosh, Damian Moppett, Stephen Murray, Kate Newby, Jerry Pethick, Eileen Quinlan, Judy Radul, Aurie Ramirez, Rob Renpenning, Marina Roy, Kevin Schmidt, Nick Sikkuark, Michael Snow, Ron Terada, Calder Tsuyuki Tomlinson, Ian Wallace, Nicole Wermers, and Ashes Withyman

Unexplained Parade
February 9–May 11, 2019

Judy Radul
Words No Pictures Pictures No Words
May 11–June 16, 2018

Kasper Feyrer
Background Actors
March 16–April 21, 2018

Rebecca Brewer, Rochelle Goldberg, Charmian Johnson, Christina Mackie
Nature
January 26–March 3, 2018

Elizabeth McIntosh
ISLANDS
November 17–December 22, 2017

Ron Terada
TL; DR
September 15–October 28, 2017

Elizabeth McIntosh, Monique Mouton, Silke Otto-Knapp
May 26–July 8, 2017

Ian Wallace
Street Floor Table Page Wall Canvas, 1969–2017
March 31–May 13, 2017

Ashes Withyman
Bullae
March 10–18, 2017

Geoffrey Farmer
The Big Kitchen
January 14–February 25, 2017

Rebecca Brewer
The Holding Sky
November 12–December 17, 2016

Raymond Boisjoly
September 16–October 29, 2016

Damian Moppett
May 6–June 25, 2016

Liz Magor
March 5–April 23, 2016

Brian Jungen
January 22–February 27, 2016

Valérie Blass
To only ever say one thing forever the same thing
November 21, 2015–January 9, 2016

Janice Kerbel
Score
September 12–October 24, 2015

Liz Magor, Jerry Pethick, Ron Tran
A view believed to be yours
May 15–June 27, 2015

Myfanwy MacLeod
TELL HER NOTHING SHE TELLS ALL
March 21–May 2, 2015

Ian Wallace
The Construction Site
January 17–February 28, 2015

Duane Linklater
But the sun is up and you're going?
November 15–December 20, 2014

Ron Terada
Jack
September 19–October 25, 2014

Jerry Pethick
Where sidewalks leap upon the table: works on paper 1966–2000
May 24–June 28, 2014

Rebecca Brewer
The Written Face
March 29–May 10, 2014

Geoffrey Farmer
The Grass and the Banana go for a walk
February 8-March 15, 2014

Ashes Withyman
Household Temple Yard
November 26, 2013–January 11, 2014

Damian Moppett
Salute
September 20–November 2, 2013

Brian Jungen, Duane Linklater
Modest Livelihood
June 7–July 20, 2013

Andrea Büttner, Joëlle de La Casinière, Ashes Withyman
April 26–June 1, 2013

Raymond Boisjoly
March 1–April 13, 2013

Liz Magor
I is being This
November 16–December 22, 2012

Christina Mackie, Jerry Pethick
Bigger than a book, wilder than a tree
September 14–October 27, 2012

Judy Radul
April 27–June 9, 2012

Kasper Feyrer
Alternatives and Opportunities
March 2–April 14, 2012

Ian Wallace
Masculin/Féminin
January 13–February 18, 2012

Ulla von Brandenburg, Guy de Cointet, Geoffrey Farmer, Janice Kerbel, Daria Martin, Judy Radul
People Things Enter Exit
October 28–December 10, 2011

Ron Terada
Jack
September 3–October 8, 2011

Robert Kleyn
Works 1969–1983
May 20–June 25, 2011

Arabella Campbell
March 25–April 30, 2011

Alex Morrison
February 3–March 12, 2011

Brian Jungen
November 19, 2010–January 15, 2011

Kevin Schmidt
September 17–October 23, 2010

Damian Moppett
The Sculptor’s Studio is a Painting
May 21–June 26, 2010

Geoffrey Farmer
The Surgeon and the Photographer
January 29-March 6, 2010

Myfanwy MacLeod
Gold
November 6–December 12, 2009

Ian Wallace
Works 1970–1979
September 18–October 24, 2009

Brian Jungen, Rebecca Belmore, Myfanwy MacLeod, Kevin Schmidt, Alex Morrison, Sam Durant, Ron Terada, Geoffrey Farmer, Jin-me Yoon
Loaded
May 15–June 20, 2009

Christos Dikeakos
March 26–April 25, 2009

Ashes Withyman
Uncertain Pilgrimage
January 15–February 14, 2009

Jin-me Yoon
October 30–November 29, 2008

Jerry Pethick
September 12–October 11, 2008

Ron Terada
May 23–June 28, 2008

Germaine Koh
April 11–May 10, 2008

Roy Kiyooka, Damian Moppett, Jerry Pethick, Ian Wallace
Process as Work
February 29–March 29, 2008

Kelly Wood, Monika Grzymala
January 18–February 16, 2008

Alex Morrison
November 23–December 22, 2007

Ian Wallace
October 18–November 17, 2007

Judy Radul
September 7–October 6, 2007

Arabella Campbell
June 8–July 7, 2007

Brian Jungen
April 27–May 26, 2007

Sam Durant
Scenes from the Pilgrim Story: Natural History
March 16–April 14, 2007

Damian Moppett
Progress in Advance of the Fall
January 19–February 24, 2007

Isabelle Pauwels
November 25–December 22, 2006

Geoffrey Farmer
Airliner Open Studio
October 21–November 18, 2006

Kevin Schmidt
September 9–October 7, 2006

Ashes Withyman, Jacob Gleeson
St. George Marsh
August 24–September 1, 2006

Christos Dikeakos, Geoffrey Farmer, Arni Haraldsson, Brian Jungen, Roy Kiyooka, Germaine Koh, Myfanwy MacLeod, Damian Moppett, Isabelle Pauwels, Jerry Pethick, Judy Radul, Kevin Schmidt, Ron Terada, Ian Wallace, Jin-me Yoon
274 East 1st
June 3–July 8, 2006

Christos Dikeakos
November 25, 2005–January 16, 2006

Alex Morrison, Isabelle Pauwels, Frances Stark, Johannes Wohnseifer
And to stop you interfering, I shall have to dematerialize you again
October 13–November 19, 2005

Geoffrey Farmer, Brian Jungen, Germaine Koh, Myfanwy MacLeod, Damian Moppett, Alex Morrison, Ron Terada, Ian Wallace, Kelly Wood
Mix with care
July 5–September 24, 2005

Ron Terada
May 20–June 25, 2005

Arabella Campbell, Neil Campbell, Ron Terada, Ian Wallace
Painting After Poverty
April 8–May 14, 2005

Sam Durant
Color Pictures
February 25–March 2, 2005

Germaine Koh
Shell
January 14–February 19, 2005

Roy Kiyooka
Open Window on a Slow Train
December 2004

Jin-me Yoon
Fugitive
October 22–November 27, 2004

Myfanwy MacLeod
Don’t Stop Dreaming
September 10–October 16, 2004

Artist Curating Artists:
Damian Moppett curates Allison Hrabluik and Zin Taylor
May 28–June 26, 2004

Geoffrey Farmer
Every Surface In Some Way Decorated, Altered or Changed Forever (Except the Float)
April 7–May 15, 2004

Artist Curating Artists:
Myfanwy MacLeod curates Kyla Mallett
February 11–March 13, 2004

Damian Moppett
1815/1962
October 30–December 6, 2003

Carsten Höller, Cameron Jamie, Jakob Kolding, Myfanwy MacLeod, Kyla Mallett, Valérie Mréjen, Isabelle Pauwels, Raymond Pettibon, Ron Terada, Lawrence Weiner, Erwin Wurm
Seethe
September 10–October 25, 2003

Iain Baxter, Geoffrey Farmer, Roy Kiyooka, Germaine Koh, Myfanwy MacLeod, Ron Terada
I Sell Security
May 29–August 16, 2003

Kelly Wood
Black Plastic
April 11–May 17, 2003

Ian Wallace
February 28–April 5, 2003

Alex Morrison
Housewrecker
January 17–February 22, 2003

Allyson Clay
November 29–December 21, 2002

Ron Terada
September 6–October 12, 2002

Germaine Koh, Alex Morrison, N.E. Thing Co., Ron Terada, Ian Wallace
Signage
June 8–August 31, 2002

Christos Dikeakos
March 21–April 20, 2002

Germaine Koh
March 8–April 13, 2002

Brian Jungen
February 1–March 2, 2002

Geoffrey Farmer
Catriona Jeffries Catriona
September 9–October 9, 2001

Myfanwy MacLeod
Miss Moonshine
September 7–October 6, 2001

Geoffrey Farmer, Germaine Koh, Myfanwy MacLeod, Damian Moppett, Ron Terada, Jin-me Yoon, Kelly Wood
Supernatural Fairytales (Pink Island)
June 8–August 25, 2001