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James Welling

Head of a Goddess, 2019

Oil pigment, electrostatic print on polyester (Winsor & Newton Artists’ Oil Colour, HP Color Laser Jet CP225 on Pronto plate)
61.9 × 46.7 × 3.5 cm

Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/​Paris; Photo: kunst​-doku​men​ta​ti​on​.com

Acropolis Museum. Karyatid, 2019

UV print on Dibond
88.9 × 131.4 × 3.5 cm

Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/​Paris; Photo: kunst​-doku​men​ta​ti​on​.com

Erechtheion. North Porch, 2019

UV print on Dibond
88.9 × 131.4 × 3.5 cm

Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/​Paris; Photo: kunst​-doku​men​ta​ti​on​.com

Torso of a Youth, 2019

UV-Druck auf Dibond
131,4 × 88,9 × 3,5 cm

Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/​Paris; Photo: kunst​-doku​men​ta​ti​on​.com

James Welling (*1951 Hartford, lives in Los Angeles) became known for his innovative approach to the medium of photography. For decades, he uses ever-new methods of photographic imaging, including, increasingly, digital technologies but also analogue methods that have fallen into oblivion, and the use of color plays a crucial role.

The photographs by Welling shown in this exhibition feature architectural and sculptural elements from the world of ancient images. In 2018, Welling began taking photographs in the antiquities collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, then traveled to Greece a year later to continue working with the architectural and visual forms of antiquity in Athens and environs. Athens was the heart of the world of Greek antiquity; important thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle had their philosophical educational institutes here.

The artist’s initial interest was bringing back to life aspects of an ancient past. As his point of departure for that, he employs different motifs such as caryatids from the Acropolis Museum, the toros of a youth, or the Ionic columns of a characteristic temple on the Acropolis: the so-called Erechtheion. Welling’s photographs are more than mere reproductions of his motifs; rather, he causes them to interplay with the materiality of the medium. In many works — for example, Acropolis Museum, Karyatid (2019) and Head of a Goddess (2019) — the artist integrates layers of paint into the image and thus relates the current form of the sculptures in relation to their (colorfully) magnificent past. The temples and figures of the ancient world are also perceived today as pure” and stoic, but that deviates considerably from the lavishness of their historical appearance: they were originally strikingly colorful and painted in detail.

In other works by Welling, by contrast, the motifs tend to recede into the background and are superimposed with the materiality of photography and a deliberate intervention — for example, in the fluid-looking work Torso of a Youth (2019), revealing another historical reference. In Erechtheion. North Porch (2019), Welling alludes in turn to classic black-and-white photography and its look at a past that has been presented almost cinematographically.

The artist relates his sculptural and architectural motifs to the time of their first photographic documentation by archaeologists and other researchers in the late nineteenth century. Thanks to the multilayered aesthetic of the worked materials, Welling takes up processes of cultural appropriation and representation, studies the institutional practices of photography, and at the same time reflects on value of the medium in the tension between past and future.

James Welling

*1951 Hartford, lives in Los Angeles

has shown his work in solo exhibitions at the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York; the Regen Projects, Los Angeles; the Portland Museum of Art, Portland; the Tate Modern, London; Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Vienna; at the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent; with the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle; at the Donals Young Gallery, Chicago; with the Barbara Gross Gallery, Munich; and the Camden Arts Center, London.

His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Getty Center, Los Angeles; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; at the Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt; at the Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain Bourgogne, Dijon; at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg; at the Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen; at the Kunsthalle Basel, Basel; at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and at the Whitney Biennial, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.