James Welling Cindy Sherman Sherrie Levine SFMOMA Considers Unusual Expansion Plan Prospect Biennial Plans Return to New Orleans Cindy Sherman to Receive the Jewish Museum's Man Ray Award Modern Masters Give FIAC a Boost Faking It at Frieze

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Self-taught as a photographer, James Welling developed his critical approach to the medium as a reaction to the widespread use of photo-documentation in the conceptual practices pushed at the CalArts MFA program he attended in the early ’70s. Along with contemporaries such as Cindy Sherman and Sherrie Levine, he sought to undermine the assumption of transparency at the core of straight photography. Welling, however, is unique among photographers of his generation in his use of abstraction to achieve these subversive ends. Emphasizing this aspect of the artist’s practice, "Works 1980-2008" brought together six series of photographs that in various ways blurred nonrepresentation with misrepresentation.

In each case, Welling’s manipulations palpably slowed viewers’ grasp of the image. In the "Gelatin Photographs" (1984), for example, Welling achieved this effect of delayed recognition by shooting slabs of gelatin with high-contrast film. From a distance, the resulting images read as abstract splashes of ink. Viewed more closely, the photographs suggested polished black glass. Similarly, the series "Untitled" (1981) depicted starkly lit drapery, the folds of which were strewn with torn paper (actually shards of pastry dough). The highlights of the show, however, were Welling’s "Torsos" (2005-08). These photograms of crumpled and folded window screens doubling as classical nudes were made that much more striking by the extreme distance between their flimsy, frayed surfaces and the remarkable illusion of sculptural weight in the final images. Not just a critique of vérité photography, Welling’s diversion of these banal materials toward more elevated results opened up an imaginative space in the gap between first and second glance.

"James Welling" originally appeared in the July/August 2008 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' July/August 2008 Table of Contents.