Maureen Paley is happy to current a joint exhibition of works by James Welling and Bernd & Hilla Becher. This would be the fifth presentation of Welling on the gallery and our first exhibition together with the Bechers with type help from Sprüth Magers and Max Becher.
Although the Bechers started their observe within the Nineteen Sixties—previous Welling by a decade – every artist has pushed on the medium of images of their illustration of structure. Welling first noticed pictures by the Bechers on the seminal 1970 MoMA exhibition, Data, and he met Hilla Becher three years later while finding out at CalArts. In 2022, following the Bechers’ retrospective on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, Welling mirrored on their work in an essay he wrote for the Brooklyn Rail, reaffirming his long-standing admiration for his or her “pursuit of a singular photographic dream.”1
James Welling is thought for his work that considers the historical past and technical specificities of images. Since 2023, Welling has labored on his Thought Objects, through which he experiments with exaggerated “unsharp masks”, a typical set of picture sharpening instruments which can be typically imperceptible. Welling as a substitute modifies these unsharp masks to provide halos, exaggerated bas-relief results, and intensified saturation, underscoring the fluidity and malleability of photographic photographs.
The works listed below are drawn from Breuer, a collection that may be seen as a “chapter” throughout the Thought Objects and depict buildings by Brutalist architect Marcel Breuer. “In these pictures, I respectfully and consciously labored towards sure rules the Bechers employed—depict the entire constructing and current a number of views. As an alternative, I present particulars, partial views, and interiors. What I attempted to counsel with these partial views was the sensation that each one the person work of an architect will be linked collectively to kind, by way of my pictures, a single mega-work that spans time, location and supplies.”2
The German artist duo Bernd and Hilla Becher started their programme of methodically photographing disappearing industrial constructions in 1957. Over 5 many years, the Bechers captured water towers, fuel tanks, blast furnaces, and different purposeful buildings, primarily in Europe and North America. Their work will be learn as an elaborate anthropological mission dedicated to documenting the structure of varied places and industries, as soon as the important thing engines of modernity.
“The Bechers’ sensitivity to the perils of extinction jogs my memory of chook watchers. Like critical birders, they had been all the time looking out for recent industrial specimens and after they noticed one, they might fastidiously word the placement and return later to {photograph} it.”
—Welling, 20223
The duo persistently photographed their topics beneath overcast skies to keep away from shadows and employed a large-format digicam for element, a degree of distinction from Welling who works throughout seasonal circumstances. The depth of focus within the Bechers’ footage exceeds what the human eye is able to, making certain that each architectural rivet is clearly seen. This strategy highlights their want to scale back subjectivity, positioning these utilitarian objects as topics of contemplation, difficult viewers to rethink the aesthetic and historic significance of those constructions.
“As a photographer, I see the pleasure they took of their work… For all of the formality of the Bechers’ work we have now seen the way it might have interaction completely different modalities and meanings—portraiture, graphic design, preservation, humour.”
—Welling, 20224
This exhibition supplies a novel alternative to see these artists’ works in dialog in London.
at Maureen Paley, London
till April 19, 2025
