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The
Donald Young Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work
by Los Angeles-based artist James Welling. Since the late 70s and early
80s, Welling’s interest in the meaning and nature of photography
has lead him to explore various subjects and photographic techniques
that push the boundaries of the medium both technically and conceptually.
In this exhibition Welling will present three bodies of work, Mystery
Photographs, Degradé Photographs, and Tricolor Photographs,
which use abstraction to continue his investigation of the formal qualities
of photography.
With the Mystery Photographs, much like his breakthrough aluminum
foil and drape photographs of the early 80s, Welling creates a beautifully
abstracted photographic composition through the use of an otherwise
recognizable material. In this recent series, Welling enlarges, morphs
and blurs minute sections of a painter’s palette until the original
image is a completely unrecognizable abstraction.
The Degradé Photographs further Welling’s ongoing
interest in the literal translation of the word photography as “writing
with light”. Through a process of exposing photographic paper to
light, Welling creates richly saturated, beautifully colored abstractions.
These photograms, as noted by critic Roslyn Deutsche, are a record of
time, movement and light rather than a representation of an object.
In the third body of work, the Tricolor Photographs, Welling
again manipulates the photographic process. Through the use of digital
imaging software, Welling combines three black and white negatives of
a single image, each shot respectively through red, blue or green filters,
to create a three color, offset image. Subjects such as flower gardens
and marshy swamplands are skewed and blurred through fields of intensified
color.
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Welling’s
work is recognized and exhibited internationally and is represented
in many public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York and Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany. His recent exhibition of
abstract photographs organized by the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
travels to the Art Gallery of York University, Toronto in November.
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