INFLUENTIAL, HIGHLY RESPECTED contemporary-art giant Rodney Graham passed away Saturday at 73.
Condolences are pouring onto social media from around the world. In an announcement, the four galleries who represented him—303 Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, Lisson Gallery, Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle and Esther Schipper—said he had been battling cancer.
Born in Abbotsford, Graham emerged from the 1970s’ photoconceptual movement in this city—the “Vancouver School” that gave rise to names like Jeff Wall, Roy Arden, and Ken Lum—putting his own unique, cheeky, and genre-busting twist on it. He was known for referencing the art-historical, the literary, the philosophical, and especially the cinematic and the musical.