James Welling: New Work

Opening on April 7, 2005, David Zwirner will present work by Los Angeles-based photographer James Welling. In 2000, Welling was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, OH, which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. In 2002, there was a second mid-career retrospective, highlighting Welling's color photographs, at the Palais de Beaux Arts in Brussels, Belgium. In 2006, his work will be included in the group exhibition The Los Angeles Art Scene, 1955-85, at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France. James Welling has exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad. This will be the artist's debut exhibition at David Zwirner.

James Welling's thirty-year career has met with extensive critical acclaim. Welling was first known for his abstract photographs in which he used such materials as crumpled aluminum foil, velvet, and gelatin as subject matter. In recent years, he has produced an expansive body of work, moving effortlessly from recognizable subjects (architecture, landscape, railroads) to abstract photograms, from exquisite gelatin silver prints to radiant fields of color. Moreover, Welling's sensitivity to the nuances of photographic processes and his resistance to preconceived notions of photography has produced a body of work which defies easy categorization.

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