James Welling, professor of photography in UCLA’s department of art, will have a solo exhibition “Things Beyond Resemblance: James Welling Photographs” featured at the Brandywine River Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
The exhibition, on view Aug. 8 through Nov. 15, will feature 50 pieces, entitled the “Wyeth” works, that demonstrate painter Andrew Wyeth’s formative influence on Welling’s career, from his earliest watercolors in the 1960s through his recent photographs. “I realized I had never stopped thinking about Wyeth. He had become a part of how I see,” said Welling.
In 2010, shortly following the death of Wyeth, Welling traveled to Pennsylvania and Maine and began taking color photographs in the same areas where Wyeth painted throughout his life. Similar to Wyeth, who would alter reality in his paintings, Welling digitally manipulates his photographs in subtle ways in an attempt to achieve Wyeth’s practice.
Welling’s work will extend beyond the walls of the museum with the addition of an outdoor installation, “Gradients”, on the museum’s historic properties, that will explore the intersection of photography and sculpture.
For more information about the exhibition, visit the Brandywine River Museum of Art page.
