FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Regen Projects
633 North Almont Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Tel. (310) 276-5424
Fax. (310) 276-7430
JAMES WELLING: New Photographs
April 19 – May 17, 2003
Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10:30 - 5:30 pm
Opening reception: Saturday, April 19, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Regen Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of James Welling's most recent photographic work. This exhibition will feature two new series’ of black and white photographs, and recent color photograms. The new black and white series’ includes a group of large-scale landscapes detailing fallen branches and bramble in the Santa Monica mountains. The second series of black and white works are smaller urban landscape images of Los Angeles.
Welling's iconoclastic and structuralist approach to photography has allowed him to explore a variety of formal and theoretical facets of picture making. Throughout his work, Welling isolates light and the mechanics of the camera, often tying his practice to painting and its relationship to photography. Rather than document the subject, Welling places the emphasis on how light articulates form, revealing light and the photographic process as a subject in itself. In the Degradé series of unique, color photograms, Welling creates simple fields of rich saturated color by exposing chromogenic color paper to various color filtrations and shadowed forms.
Welling’s “subject matter shifts from abstraction to documentation: crumpled aluminum foil; drapes; shadows; light sources; trains, tracks; trees; industrial sites; views outside his studio. His works question any assumed differences between abstraction and representation, between modes of presentation. Welling’s photographs are objects in themselves, beautiful compositions that also gloss and comprise a history of photographic practices. Almost every idea its apparatus offers has been noted, somewhere. ... ‘From the beginning,’ Welling observes, ‘there was a dichotomy: the shadow of the object and the representation of the object, the two great historical poles that are photography’s foundation.’ He tells the medium’s Manichaean history, ingeniously enlarging it with work that loves and ironizes both sides of the argument. ... Welling lavishes us with illusion and shatters it too, simultaneously dispensing a shot of contemporary ambivalence to the mighty image.”
(Tillman, Lynne. “James Welling.” Artforum. May 2001. pp. 1390143.)
James Welling studied at CalArts in the early 1970's and for the past eight years he has been living and working in Los Angeles. Welling has exhibited at museums and galleries internationally and he is currently professor of art at UCLA. An exhibition of Welling’s abstract photographs was organized last year by the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and the York University Art Gallery in Toronto. In 2000 a touring retrospective exhibition of James Welling’s work was organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and traveled to MoCA in Los Angeles in 2001. Monographs of Welling's photography include: Abstract, published by the Palais de Beaux Arts James Welling: Photographs 1974 - 1999, published by the Wexner Center for the Arts; James Welling published by the Kunstmuseum Luzern in Switzerland; The Photographic Invisible: James Welling, published by Wako Works of Art, Tokyo, Japan; James Welling: Wolfsburg, published by Cantz in Wolfsburg, Germany; and James Welling published by Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland.
An opening reception for James Welling will take place on Saturday, April 19 from 6 - 8 pm at the gallery. For further information please contact Shaun Caley Regen or Lisa Overduin at the gallery at (310) 276-5424.
Regen Projects
633 North Almont Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Tel. (310) 276-5424
Fax. (310) 276-7430
JAMES WELLING: New Photographs
April 19 – May 17, 2003
Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10:30 - 5:30 pm
Opening reception: Saturday, April 19, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Regen Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of James Welling's most recent photographic work. This exhibition will feature two new series’ of black and white photographs, and recent color photograms. The new black and white series’ includes a group of large-scale landscapes detailing fallen branches and bramble in the Santa Monica mountains. The second series of black and white works are smaller urban landscape images of Los Angeles.
Welling's iconoclastic and structuralist approach to photography has allowed him to explore a variety of formal and theoretical facets of picture making. Throughout his work, Welling isolates light and the mechanics of the camera, often tying his practice to painting and its relationship to photography. Rather than document the subject, Welling places the emphasis on how light articulates form, revealing light and the photographic process as a subject in itself. In the Degradé series of unique, color photograms, Welling creates simple fields of rich saturated color by exposing chromogenic color paper to various color filtrations and shadowed forms.
Welling’s “subject matter shifts from abstraction to documentation: crumpled aluminum foil; drapes; shadows; light sources; trains, tracks; trees; industrial sites; views outside his studio. His works question any assumed differences between abstraction and representation, between modes of presentation. Welling’s photographs are objects in themselves, beautiful compositions that also gloss and comprise a history of photographic practices. Almost every idea its apparatus offers has been noted, somewhere. ... ‘From the beginning,’ Welling observes, ‘there was a dichotomy: the shadow of the object and the representation of the object, the two great historical poles that are photography’s foundation.’ He tells the medium’s Manichaean history, ingeniously enlarging it with work that loves and ironizes both sides of the argument. ... Welling lavishes us with illusion and shatters it too, simultaneously dispensing a shot of contemporary ambivalence to the mighty image.”
(Tillman, Lynne. “James Welling.” Artforum. May 2001. pp. 1390143.)
James Welling studied at CalArts in the early 1970's and for the past eight years he has been living and working in Los Angeles. Welling has exhibited at museums and galleries internationally and he is currently professor of art at UCLA. An exhibition of Welling’s abstract photographs was organized last year by the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and the York University Art Gallery in Toronto. In 2000 a touring retrospective exhibition of James Welling’s work was organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and traveled to MoCA in Los Angeles in 2001. Monographs of Welling's photography include: Abstract, published by the Palais de Beaux Arts James Welling: Photographs 1974 - 1999, published by the Wexner Center for the Arts; James Welling published by the Kunstmuseum Luzern in Switzerland; The Photographic Invisible: James Welling, published by Wako Works of Art, Tokyo, Japan; James Welling: Wolfsburg, published by Cantz in Wolfsburg, Germany; and James Welling published by Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland.
An opening reception for James Welling will take place on Saturday, April 19 from 6 - 8 pm at the gallery. For further information please contact Shaun Caley Regen or Lisa Overduin at the gallery at (310) 276-5424.