For the 2024 edition of Paris Photo, Galerie Vallois offered a solo show by William Wegman. The gallery declared:
On the 3 main walls are hung giant and unique Polaroids (73 x 55 cm) from the 80s and 90s while on the walls of the reserve, two photographic pieces from the early 70s and the video “Tails”, with the first of Bill’s dog, the one who became the Village Voice’s “Man of the Year” upon his death, Man Ray, to show the origins of the work. Wegman presented himself at the end of the 60s as a pure conceptual-minimalist artist (he also participated in the famous exhibition “When Attitudes Become Forms” in 1969) who saw his world turned upside down by the meeting with Man Ray and the inclusion of the dog in his work.
“Tails” is by the way still in line with the videos of artists such as Bruce Nauman.
As an extension of our personal exhibition at the gallery curated by Martin Bethenod in 2022, this stand is placed under the sign of “agility”, a fun and sporting discipline combining man and dog “I have always considered my work
as a shared fun activity,” says Wegman. In his images the dog is a partner in the creative process. We can compare this relationship of “disciplined spontaneity” or “stimulated attention which benefits both the dogs and the master” to that which the American philosopher Donna Haraway described in 2003 as “an ontological choreography, a vital game invented by the participants from the stories of body and mind which they inherit and which they adapt to compose the verbs of flesh which make them as they are”.
Humor, poetry and elegance are the common points of our selection.
Galerie Vallois
33-36 rue de Seine
75006 Paris
https://www.galerie-vallois.com/
