James Welling’s photograms have earned him attention both in Aperture magazine issue #190 and Aperture’s recent publication, The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Contemporary Photography. His cameraless works are both aesthetically beautiful and challenging to the trajectory of photography.  Welling will be speaking at Aperture Gallery tomorrow, Tuesday night as part of the Parsons lecture series at 7 pm.

FREE

Artist’s Talk with James Welling
Tuesday, October 6, 7:00 pm
Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

Below is an update on some of the latest goings on with three Aperture artists. On view at the Greenberg Van Doren Gallery in New York, The New Antiquity, features work from artist Tim Davis. Similar in tone to My Life in Politics, Davis surveys contemporary culture with his decisive lens, always with an element of wit and skepticism.

Photographer Brian Ulrich of MP3: Midwest Photographers Publication Project, is on display at Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco. His exhibition, Dark Stores responds to the 2001 call from the U.S. government to stimulate the economy through shopping. The work presents a skeptical gaze at the over-developed suburban retail landscape that is instantly recognizable, even considering his omission of logos and brand names.

One of the artists from Aperture’s The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography, artist Silvio Wolf has a solo exhibition in Milan, Before Time, featuring works created specifically for Galleria Nicoletta Rusconi that explores the dynamic relationship between object and viewer. Wolf’s project was conceived as a single work consisting of seven different elements, which form a series of stations. After spending years examining images and their role in contemporary society, Wolf now shifts focus to the viewer and to the resulting interaction from this relationship. Click here to purchase a limited-edition print from Silvio Wolf.

Tim Davis: The New Antiquity
Thursday, September 10—Saturday. October 24, 2009
Greenberg Van Doren Gallery
730 Fifth Avenue at 57th street
New York

Brian Ulrich: Dark Stores
Thursday, September 10—Saturday, October 31, 2009
Robert Koch Gallery
49 Geary Street, Suite 550
San Francisco, California

Silvio Wolf: Before Time
Friday, September 18—Saturday, November 7, 2009
Galleria Nicoletta Rusconi
Corso Venezia, 22
Milan, Italy

As part of the interview series, watch new video clips of artists Bill Armstrong and Seth Lambert from the exhibition now on view through July 16 at Aperture Gallery, The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography curated by Lyle Rexer.

In the first video clip, Bill Armstrong puts in context his Mandala #450 piece that is in the show with his Infinity series of abstract blurred meditative images that he has been working on for the past 12 years. Going through his work since the 1980’s, Armstrong explains why he uses blurring as a process and his “painterly approach to photography.” At the end, he also introduces his new video work.

Bill Armstrong from Aperture Foundation on Vimeo.

In the second clip, Seth Lambert contextualizes his work in the show Nothing on the Bed of an Epson Expression 10000XL within his Failures series of grids mapping out anything from beard hair, mirror pieces to nothing with a blank scan. The latter on view in the show still presents small residues called “artefacts” that Lambert has mapped out individually into a perfect grid that always fails. He also highlights the importance of the physical object in photography even if his work is often all digital and computer generated.

Seth Lambert from Aperture Foundation on Vimeo.

Click here to hear more about his process in an online radio show he did last week on ARTonAIR with curator Lyle Rexer, artists Charles Lindsay and Penelope Umbrico included in the exhibition.

Stay tuned next Thursday for video clips of Barbara Kasten and Ellen Carey.

Click here to view The Edge of Vision limited-edition portfolio including Bill Armstrong.

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Watch previously posted videos with Lyle Rexer part 1 & part 2, Charles Lindsay, Jack Sal, Penelope Umbrico, and Silvio Wolf.

Coinciding with the exhibition now on view at Aperture Gallery, The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography, this is the second post of a weekly series of interviews on the Aperture blog for the duration of the show. The exhibition has now been extended to be on view through Thursday, July 16.

In the first video clip, conceptual artist Jack Sal speaks about his piece Sale/Sala (Salt/Room) while you watch him installing it. Inspired by the early days of photography, Sal uses the basic language of the medium in a minimalist and physical way, the mark of salt, steel and light on photographic paper, “making a three dimensional space out of a two dimensional idea, as if you were turning your camera inside out.” The picture is then constantly being made throughout the time of the exhibition.

Jack Sal from Aperture Foundation on Vimeo.

In this second video of curator Lyle Rexer, he explains how photography is not necessarily based on our memories, recording particular moments as one often assumes but “most photographs, when they are taken, look forward in time or…there are many photographs that when they are excised from their particular moment, actually have no time.” The images Rexer selected for this exhibition highlight this aspect and question our essential way of looking at other photographs and at reality in general.

Lyle Rexer – The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography, p. 2 from Aperture Foundation on Vimeo.

Stay tuned next Thursday for video clips of Penelope Umbrico and Bill Armstrong.

View related microsite

Coinciding with the exhibition now on view at Aperture Gallery, The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography, a series of interviews will be posted every Thursday on the Aperture blog for the duration of the show. For the premiere, watch a video clip of curator Lyle Rexer speaking about how the project came about and explaining his curatorial choices. The exhibition gathers the work of nineteen international contemporary photographers who base their practice in some form of abstraction from highly conceptual to more documentary approaches.  Rexer also explains his ground breaking photography exhibition encourages the viewer not to look at the photograph as a window but rather “to understand the relationship between the image and the surface.”

Lyle Rexer from Aperture Foundation on Vimeo.

This second video clip presents artist Charles Lindsay included in the show, speaking about how he started working with his unique carbon emulsion process, his inspirations and the combination of his photographic, video and sound works.

Charles Lindsay from Aperture Foundation on Vimeo.

Upcoming video clips include artists Bill Armstrong, Carel Balth, Ellen Carey, Manuel Geerinck, Barbara Kasten, Seth Lambert, Jack Sal, Penelope Umbrico, Silvio Wolf.

Stay tuned!

View related microsite