James Welling: Thought Objects

David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition of new and recent works by photographer James Welling at the gallery’s 533 West 19th Street location in New York. Welling has been represented by David Zwirner since 2005. Thought Objects marks his tenth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Since the 1970s, when he was a student at the California Institute of the Arts, Welling has become known for a relentlessly evolving body of images that considers both the history and technical specificities of photography. His work signaled a break with traditional ideas of photography by shifting attention to the construction of images themselves.

Thought Objects presents a group of loosely connected works, achieved through a range of digital processes, that together extend Welling’s ongoing investigation into what a photograph can be.

Read more or visit the artist’s website.

Image: Installation view, James Welling: Thought Objects, David Zwirner, New York, 2024

Location

525 West 19th Street New York New York, 10011

Dates

January 11—February 10, 2024

Opening Reception

Thursday, January 11, 6–8 PM

Gallery Hours

Tues—Sat 10am–6pm

Artist

Thought Objects

James Welling, photo courtesy of Jane Weinstock

James Welling, photo courtesy of Jane Weinstock

Taking his long-standing interest in experimental procedures, such as 1960s psychedelic imagery, as a starting point, in Thought Objects James Welling expands his inquiry into how these historic analog processes can be modeled in the digital environment.

Borrowing from the physicality of printmaking, the artist marshals his digital tools in unconventional ways to create compositions that are alternately built up in layers, over-saturated, collaged, and tonally inverted.

James Welling

Table, 2021/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

“With its lush abundance of paradoxes, photography offered itself as an ideal field for Welling, whose artistic practice has been dedicated to a dissection of its vocabulary, styles, and narratives for almost 40 years.”

—Martin Germann, adjunct curator, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

James Welling, Table, 2021/2023 (detail)

James Welling, Table, 2021/2023 (detail)

James Welling

Table with Tarpaulin, 2021/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

While the works in the exhibition echo subject matter from earlier series, including architecture, flora, and abstraction, Welling’s pictures ultimately gesture towards the process of their own making.

United in their physical appearance, each work is printed in UV-curable ink—which results in a vibrant, almost painterly application of color—and presented with an artist-designed armature that causes the thin panel to appear to float just off the wall, thereby emphasizing their object-quality and imbuing them with a feeling of immateriality that is inherent to the digital realm.

James Welling

Paris Door, 2017/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

63 x 42 inches (160 x 106.7 cm)

“Self-taught as a photographer, he initially sought to fuse modernist photography with conceptual practice. Welling has since developed an approach shaped by experiment and radical stylistic diversity that evolves along the border of photography and painting, film, architecture, sculpture, and dance.”

—Heike Eipeldauer, curator, Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna

Installation view, James Welling: Thought Objects, David Zwirner, New York, 2024

Installation view, James Welling: Thought Objects, David Zwirner, New York, 2024

James Welling

The Battery, 2021

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

63 x 42 inches (160 x 106.7 cm)

In 2021, Welling began working on a group of digitally collaged images composed of thin strips excised from different photographs of the same location, aligned in such a way that they read as a coherent image of the place while also appearing abstracted, as though flash-cut from an impression or memory. In photographs such as The Battery, Welling pieces together fragments in varying orientations within a vertical composition, bolstering them with digitally rendered shadows.

James Welling

Pier 24, 2021

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

63 x 42 inches (160 x 106.7 cm)

“Yet throughout his work, thematic constraints emerge—the interplay of light and color on form, the intensity of place coupled with memory. Welling chooses different formats to suit each project; his photographs operate at the crossroads of material and conceptual practice.”

—Diane Waggoner, curator, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

James Welling

The Salk Institute, 2015/2021

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

Welling deploys the notion of collage in a different way in an image of architect Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center in Goshen, New York, which he photographed prior to its 2015 demolition.

James Welling

Orange County Government Center, 2015/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

Here, he combines a morning exposure and an afternoon exposure of the brutalist structure—which appeared in the background of several of his Choreograph photographs—to create an image of the building reflecting itself, a play on the notion of photographic self-reflexivity.

James Welling, 7690, from the Choreograph series, 2015 (detail)

James Welling, 7690, from the Choreograph series, 2015 (detail)

Similarly, in Cubi XXII—shot on the Yale University campus—a stainless-steel David Smith sculpture provides a kind of scaffolding, mirroring the concrete and glass surface of adjacent Rudolph Hall.

James Welling

Cubi XXII, 2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 42 inches (106.7 x 106.7 cm)

“[The pictures] are imbued with their own making in a manner akin to an over-printed makeready in commercial offset printing. Just as the process of preparing for a press run can result in makereadies that contain repeated, superimposed images at various levels of translucence … [Welling] conflates disparate, apparently random pictures.… The artist describes his shift from making photograms to producing inkjet prints as a transition from working like a painter to working like an offset printer.”

—Lisa Hostetler, curator and art historian

Installation view, James Welling: Thought Objects, David Zwirner, New York, 2024

Installation view, James Welling: Thought Objects, David Zwirner, New York, 2024

Welling’s work with photographic layers in the digital realm is informed by his time spent working in analog photography, shooting on film and making prints in the darkroom.

In 2022, while making his Cento photographs of ancient statuary hand-inked with oil-based paint, Welling became interested in the dappled and uneven patterns left behind on the sheets of newspaper that he used to clean his rollers. He started to photograph these accidental offset prints, and used these as the basis for new works.

James Welling

Prouts Neck near Winslow Homer's Studio, 2015/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

In Prouts Neck near Winslow Homer's Studio, the patterning added on top of a photograph of the area of coastal Maine where Winslow Homer worked seems to conjure the seascapes of painter John Marin.

John Marin, Grey Sea, 1938. Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

John Marin, Grey Sea, 1938. Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

James Welling

Staircase, Villa Savoye, 2020/2022

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

63 x 42 inches (160 x 106.7 cm)

An orange and blue offset print overlaid on an image of a neutral-toned Le Corbusier–designed 1928 home—a motif that also appeared in the artist’s Choreographs series—in Staircase, Villa Savoye gives the image a grainy quality that recalls the inadvertent overprints found in makereadies or in double exposures.

James Welling, 2056, from the Choreograph series, 2020

James Welling, 2056, from the Choreograph series, 2020

“What is specific to this medium, Welling’s work suggests, is its precarious position on the borderline between a bright world and a dark room or, to put it another way, its perpetual vacillation between the occult and enlightened. A kind of ambivalence haunts the operations of this apparatus, and this artist makes it overt in the product: a two-sidedness (that will in turn open onto many more sides) is worked into every flat print he brings to our attention.”

—Jan Tumlir, writer and art historian

James Welling

Hosta, 2022

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

In another group of images, Welling repurposes digital processes designed to sharpen pictures to create distortions, causing the photographs to appear as dimensional bas-reliefs. In works such as Hosta, flowers—an enduring subject for the artist—uncannily seem to extend outward from the work’s surface.

James Welling

Canna Lily, 2021

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

This approach finds its inspiration in the work of French painter, sculptor, and photographer Raoul Ubac, who helped push photography—known primarily at the time as a realist medium—into the realm of surrealism by showcasing its unique ability to distort appearances.

Raoul Ubac, Corps ensablés, 1939. Collection of Centre Pompidou, Paris

Raoul Ubac, Corps ensablés, 1939. Collection of Centre Pompidou, Paris

James Welling

Oak, 2013/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

“Photography today seems to be completely content-driven. The meaning and value of the work lies in identifying the subject. It's as if the photograph is not even a representation. It's not that I don't care about content, but content is not the only way a photograph has meaning.”

—James Welling in Flowers, David Zwirner Books, 2007

Installation view, James Welling: Thought Objects, David Zwirner, New York, 2024

Installation view, James Welling: Thought Objects, David Zwirner, New York, 2024

James Welling

The Royal Salt-Works of Arc et Senans, 1988/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

53 3/4 x 42 inches (136.5 x 106.7 cm)

“Many of Welling’s works emerge from self-proscribed formulae that channel the processes of image creation, making them clearly visible, yet leave leeway for experimentation and spontaneity.”

—Thomas Seelig, head curator, Museum Folkwang, Essen

James Welling, The Royal Salt-Works of Arc et Senans, 1988/2023 (detail)

James Welling, The Royal Salt-Works of Arc et Senans, 1988/2023 (detail)

Finally, in other images, including The Royal Salt-Works of Arc et Senans and Annunciation Priory, Welling takes these manipulations further, bringing together positive and negative images of the same subject to create heavy, almost cartoonish black outlines and strong primary colors.

As in all of his Thought Objects, Welling’s unexpected transformations, achieved with simple digital tools, underscore the fluidity and malleability of photographic images.

James Welling

Annunciation Priory, 2015/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

James Welling

Hansaviertel Apartment Building, 2017/2022

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

“A few years ago, Mr. Welling returned to architecture as a subject. More recently he has concentrated again on the expressive possibilities of light, what it reveals, what it suggests. Light is, of course, the formal and metaphoric bedrock of photography, a medium which … Mr. Welling has, from early in his career, done his share to change.”

—Holland Cotter, The New York Times

James Welling

Tea Pavilion, 2017/2022

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

Installation view, James Welling: Thought Objects, David Zwirner, New York, 2024

Installation view, James Welling: Thought Objects, David Zwirner, New York, 2024

Artist Panel Discussion

Saturday, January 20, 12 PM
New York | 533 West 19th Street

Join us inside James Welling’s current exhibition in New York for a panel discussion with Welling, fellow artists Jeffrey Whetstone and Miranda Lichtenstein, and art historian Robert Slifkin.

RSVP Now

Inquire About Works by James Welling

An installation view of the exhibition, James Welling: Thought Objects, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2024.

An installation view of the exhibition, James Welling: Thought Objects, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2024.

An installation view of the exhibition, James Welling: Thought Objects, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2024.

An installation view of the exhibition, James Welling: Thought Objects, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2024.

An installation view of the exhibition, James Welling: Thought Objects, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2024.

An installation view of the exhibition, James Welling: Thought Objects, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2024.

An installation view of the exhibition, James Welling: Thought Objects, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2024.

An installation view of the exhibition, James Welling: Thought Objects, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2024.

An installation view of the exhibition, James Welling: Thought Objects, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2024.

An installation view of the exhibition, James Welling: Thought Objects, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2024.

James Welling

Pier 24, 2021

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

63 x 42 inches (160 x 106.7 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

Prouts Neck near Winslow Homer's Studio, 2015/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

Oak, 2013/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

Table, 2021/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

Table with Tarpaulin, 2021/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

Tea Pavilion, 2017/2022

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

The Battery, 2021

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

63 x 42 inches (160 x 106.7 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

Hosta, 2022

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

Orange County Government Center, 2015/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

Staircase, Villa Savoye, 2020/2022

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

63 x 42 inches (160 x 106.7 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

Canna Lily, 2021

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

The Salk Institute, 2015/2021

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

The Royal Salt-Works of Arc et Senans, 1988/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

53 3/4 x 42 inches (136.5 x 106.7 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

Paeonia, 2021/2022

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

Hansaviertel Apartment Building, 2017/2022

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

Annunciation Priory, 2015/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

Paris Door, 2017/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

63 x 42 inches (160 x 106.7 cm)

$40,000

James Welling

Cubi XXII, 2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

42 x 42 inches (106.7 x 106.7 cm)

$30,000

James Welling

Leaf Imprint, 2013/2023

UV-curable ink on Dibond aluminum

11 x 16 inches (27.9 x 40.6 cm)

$12,000

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