The Newman Lecture on Contemporary Photography with James Welling is tonight from 6 to 7 p.m. in the Pillsbury Auditorium. The cost is $15; $10 for MIA Members; free for Contemporary and Photography & New Media Affinity Group Members. To reserve, call the Members’ Hotline: (612) 870-6323.

Focusing on twenty-five photographs from 1970 to 2010, James Welling will chart his transition as an artist from video, sculpture, dance, and painting to photography.

James Welling used filters when he took his photographs of Glass House. On the concept of filters, Welling states:

“I’ve been using the word filter as a noun, but it’s also a verb. A filter lets some wavelengths of light through and certain kinds of information to seep in.” Artforum. 2010. “500 Words: James Welling.” Accessed 10/10/2010. http://artforum.com/words/id=24743

Learn more about Glass House at the Newman Lecture on Contemporary Photography with James Welling is this Thursday, October 14, 6-7 p.m. The lecture is in the Pillsbury Auditorium.  Tickets for the event are $15; $10 MIA members; free for Contemporary and Photography & New Media Affinity Group members. To reserve, call the Members’ Hotline: (612) 870-6323.

Periodically, we’ll ask artists and writers to contribute 100 words on featured New Pictures artists. For “New Pictures 3: James Welling’s Glass House,” we have asked photographer Mark Wyse to contribute his 100 words. Based out of Los Angeles, Mark Wyse’s works are included in major museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

James Welling

I can’t help thinking, while looking, that James Welling is trying to make the Glass House bleed. But this isn’t right and glass doesn’t bleed.

James Welling in pursuit of making the invisible, visible has taken photography’s most adored trait, its illusion of transparency collapse in on itself. The intellectual and visual allure of Phillip Johnson’s masterpiece of reflection and transparency, the Glass House must have been an irresistible pull. In Welling’s photographs the Glass House becomes a sublimated analogy of photography itself.

Here light and glass unravel into a spectrum of hallucinogenic color.

Looking at the photographs, I quickly feel the presence of James Welling’s body standing, looking, seeing, contaminating and polluting with psychedelic color the pristine, thoughts of Phillip Johnson’s idealism.

In Glass House, not only does photography see itself, it dreams.

-Mark Wyse

Check out this new video, Glass House Cross Dissolve, by James Welling. The video is on view in “New Pictures 3: James Welling, Glass House“.

[youtube AupHvwAHBME nolink]

Be sure to come to the free exhibition, on view in the second floor Perlman Gallery (262) from now until March 6, 2011.

Check out installation photos of the New Pictures 3 exhibition, James Welling’s Glass House.

The free exhibition is on view from now until March 6, 2011 in the second floor Perlman Gallery (262).

Welling Glass House photographs on view now. Reminder, the official opening is on September 30, 2010, 6-9 p.m. David Little will speak on the show at 6:30 p.m. that evening.

Announcing New Pictures 3 artist, James Welling! The exhibition is on view beginning on Friday, August 20, 2010  in the Perlman Gallery (262). An official opening will take place on September 30 when everyone is back from summer vacation. On September 30, David Little, Curator and Head of the Department of Photography and New Media, will present a Gallery talk on the show at 6:30 P.M. Save the date! The exhibition is free.