James Welling: Pathological Color | Viewing Room

Pathological Color

James Welling

“I decided to peel apart the layers of the three-color processes that determine how our eyes—and all photographic media—register color. My aim was to show seeing.”

James Welling has spent more than a decade deconstructing—and reconstructing—color. His body of work acts as an evolving, dynamic archive that reconsiders the history and technical capacity of the photographic medium.

The artist carefully creates multi-layered images of subjects including contemporary dance, landscape, and architecture to explore trichromatic vision—the psychological perception of color through red, green, or blue sensors in the eye.

Continuing to investigate color phenomena in his multi-channel inkjet prints, Welling has adapted Goethe’s suggestive concept of “pathological color.”

He worked with the gallery to create this online exhibition on the occasion of his solo presentation at ADAA: The Art Show. The works presented here bring together a selection that expands on the series that was exhibited at the fair.

James Welling

Morgan Great Hall, 2015

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

21 × 31 1/2 inches (53.3 × 80 cm)
Framed: 22 1/4 × 32 3/4 inches (56.5 × 83.2 cm)

Sold

James Welling

Avery Court, 2014

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

31 1/2 × 21 inches (80 × 53.3 cm)
Framed: 32 3/4 × 22 1/4 inches (83.2 × 56.5 cm)

Available

In Kusama (2014), part of a group of photographs centered around MoMA’s sculpture garden, Welling’s digital images are layered above and beneath an archival photo of a Yayoi Kusama performance in the same space in 1965.

James Welling

Kusama, 2014

Inkjet print

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)
Framed: 43 1/8 x 64 inches (109.5 x 162.6 cm)

Available

Archives Pamphlet Files: Sculpture Garden. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York © The New York Daily News

In the 1970s, Richard Avedon captured the essence of psychedelia by employing the color techniques of the era—tactics that Welling adapts digitally in some of his own works. “I realized that I could recreate some of those techniques that Avedon had used for The Beatles by taking the same file and placing an equal density object or gradient map in between the two files that would color parts of the image,” Welling explains.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, musicians, London, August 11, 1967
Photograph by Richard Avedon. © The Richard Avedon Foundation

Welling began his exploration of pathological color when he famously photographed Philip Johnson’s Glass House over several years and seasons in the late 2000s, physically holding colored filters in front of his camera lens.

James Welling

0818, 2006

Inkjet print

33 1/2 × 50 3/8 inches (85.1 × 127.8 cm)
Framed: 41 5/8 × 58 1/4 inches (105.7 × 128 cm)

Available

James Welling

0696, 2006

Inkjet print

33 1/2 × 50 3/8 inches (85.1 × 128 cm)
Framed: 41 1/2 × 58 1/4 inches (105.4 × 148 cm)

Sold

“Shooting the Glass House was something of a performance,” he later explained. “Though the images look like they were done in Photoshop, very little of what you see in the photographs was added later.”

James Welling

4531, 2007

Inkjet print

40 7/8 × 51 7/8 inches (103.8 × 131.8 cm)
Framed: 41 5/8 × 52 5/8 inches (105.7 × 133.7 cm)

Available

James Welling

Vertical Lake, 2007

Inkjet print

44 1/4 × 33 inches (112.4 × 83.8 cm)
Framed: 51 3/8 × 42 1/8 inches (130.5 × 107 cm)

Available

“Teased out of the photographs, Welling’s sources are static, but, spliced together, they coalesce into pulsating abstract compositions that transcend building, nature, and dancer.”

— The New Yorker

James Welling

0521, 2015

Inkjet print

42 × 63 inches (106.7 × 160 cm)
Framed: 43 1/8 × 64 1/8 inches (109.5 × 162.9 cm)

Available

In Welling's work, there is more than one surface. In his Choreograph works, for example, photographs of dancers are superimposed with architectural and landscape images, including a Breuer building in Florida, sculptures by Tony Smith, and landscapes in Connecticut and Switzerland.

“To my surprise the buildings and landscapes that I used often seem to function like theatrical stages for the dancers,” Welling notes, “By choosing to use ‘choreograph,’ drawing with space, as a noun, I am noting its similarity to 'photograph,' drawing with light.”

James Welling

9812, 2016

Inkjet print on rag paper

42 × 63 inches (106.7 × 160 cm)
Framed: 43 1/8 × 64 inches (109.5 × 162.6 cm)

Available

“Ultimately, Welling’s oeuvre is as mobile as it is touching, simultaneously adapting and undermining academic categories, a work that is self-sufficient as well as evincing, or perhaps even rooted in, a multitude of references.”

—Martin Germann, in “About Touch: James Welling’s Art,” from Metamorphosis

James Welling

3661, 2018

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

50 1/2 × 33 5/8 inches (128.3 × 85.5 cm)
Framed: 51 3/4 × 35 inches (131.4 × 85.4 cm)

Available

Welling’s Bodies works, begun in 2014, incorporate Greek and Roman sculpture with complex and layered compositions, investigating the relationship between form and artificial color.

As he has described it, “By shuffling and altering the color channels of my overlays, I evolved a process that produces unexpected chromatic results wherein no two pictures are alike.”

James Welling

3824, 2018

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

50 1/2 × 33 5/8 inches (128.3 × 85.5 cm)
Framed: 51 3/4 × 35 inches (131.4 × 85.4 cm)

Available

James Welling

Sculpture of a Man, 2019

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

50 1/2 × 33 5/8 inches (28.3 × 85.4 cm)
Framed: 51 3/4 × 35 inches (131.4 × 88.9 cm)

Available

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