James Welling works with the construction of representation, focusing on our relationship to reality. Since the 1970s, he has explored the medium of photography itself, experimenting with all conceivable technical procedures, from capturing an image to the multiple possibilities while printing it. In 1970, after being deeply moved by watching choreographer Merce Cunningham and his company perform, Welling spent one intense year studying modern dance at the University of Pittsburgh. Despite the fact that Welling did not ultimately pursue dancing, corporality and movement have always remained central to his work, particularly evident in his abstract photographs, like his 2005 Torso series.
In the summer of 2014, Welling began choreographing and photographing art students from the University of California, Los Angeles. These black-and-white images were layered into Adobe Photoshop RGB color channels and combined with images of architecture and landscape to create intensely chromatic, complex images. The following year, he began adding to this series photographs of other dance companies, including the Los Angeles Dance Project. The new series on view at Paris Photo, Choreograph (2014-2015), continues Welling’s exploration of trichromatic color begun with his Hexachrome (2006), Glass House (2006-2009) and Maison de Verre (2009) series, with the surprising new element of the human form.
FAIR
Paris Photo 2015
From 12 to 15 November, 2015
Grand Palais
Avenue Winston Churchill
75008 Paris
France
