Artist's talk to focus on Wyeth influence

Artist’s talk to focus on Wyeth influence

Posted by Press Release on October 17, 2015

Enjoy a rare opportunity to see an intimate discussion between contemporary artist James Welling and curator Alex Klein exploring Welling’s photographic and creative process during an “In Dialogue” program at the Brandywine River Museum of Art on Thursday, Oct. 29.

A digital rendering of a James Welling Gradient sculpture is shown in the original photograph on which it was based.

The museum’s current exhibition, “Things Beyond Resemblance: James Welling Photographs,” features images taken by Welling of places where artist Andrew Wyeth lived and worked in Chadds Ford and in Maine, a museum press release said.

In Dialogue, which begins at 6 p.m., is limited to an audience of 30 and will take place in the gallery, among Welling’s works.

Welling has been questioning the norms of representation since the 1970s. His work centers on an exploration of photography, shuffling the elemental components of the medium to produce a distinctly uncompromising body of work. Welling is also intensely interested in cultural and personal ideas of memory in his work.

In opening up the medium of photography for experimentation, Welling's practice has influenced an entire generation of artists and photographers. Welling’s work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. as well as internationally.

Alex Klein, a former student of Welling’s, is the Dorothy and Stephen R. Weber Program curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Her exhibitions have included “Barbara Kasten: Stages (2015),” the first major survey of the artist’s work; and “Julia Feyrer and Tamara Henderson: Consider the Belveder (2015).”

The 50 photographs in the exhibition explore the influence of one artist upon another across time and media. Welling began the Wyeth series as an examination of 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,” said Welling in the release, “he had become a part of how I see.”

Admission costs $20 (members, $15). “Things Beyond Resemblance: James Welling Photographs” is on view through Nov. 15.