Snap happy: Ellsworth Kelly’s inaugural photographic showing, in New York

When it comes to a mastery of colour, line and form, few compare to Ellsworth Kelly. Despite the artist’s body of work being spot-lit in more than 30 museums globally, there’s an unknown aspect of his oeuvre that goes beyond wielding a paint brush or taking up asculptor’s tools. This month, Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea is hosting ‘Ellsworth Kelly: Photographs’, the first exhibition of Kelly's work in the discipline.
While the more than 30 gelatin silver prints on view date from 1950 to 1982, Kelly was completing the pieces involved in the exhibition until shortly before his death last year, at the age of 92.
Kelly began snapping pictures some 60 years ago when he first borrowed a Leica. In taking up a camera, Kelly commented that he was seeking to ‘make notations of things I had seen and subjects I had been drawing’; yet his images were never the basis for his paintings, drawings and sculpture.
The images here were largely shot in France and Spencertown in upstate New York (where he lived from 1970 until the end of his life). They include shots of barns and architectural details of windows and roofs, the shadows they cast with their interlocking forms evoking the planes and shapes of his iconic paintings and sculptures.
In a 1963 interview, Kelly revealed that his works up to that point had primarily been ‘paintings of things I’d seen, like a window, or a fragment of a piece of architecture, or someone’s legs; or sometimes the space between things, or just how the shadow of an object would look.' He wasn't interested, he explained, 'in the texture of the rock, or that it is a rock, but in the mass of it, and its shadow’.
His ethos, it transpired, was more existential – even transcendental. ‘You keep trying to freeze the world as if you could make it last forever... to get at the rapture of seeing.’
The gelatin silver prints on view may date from 1950 to 1982, but Kelly was completing the pieces involved in the exhibition until shortly before his death last year, at the age of 92
The images here were largely shot in France and Spencertown in upstate New York (where he lived from 1970 until the end of his life)
They include shots of barns and architectural details of windows and roofs, the shadows they cast with their interlocking forms evoking the planes and shapes of his iconic paintings and sculptures
Kelly first began snapping pictures some 60 years ago, on a borrowed Leica
Kelly’s ultimate ethos in his photography was almost transcendental: ‘You keep trying to freeze the world as if you could make it last forever... to get at the rapture of seeing’
INFORMATION
‘Ellsworth Kelly: Photographs’ is on view until 30 April. For more information, visit Matthew Marks Gallery’s website
Photography courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
ADDRESS
Matthew Marks Gallery
523 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
-
The ultimate high-performance earbuds, courtesy of McLaren and Bowers & Wilkins
The new Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 McLaren Edition continues a decade’s worth of cross-pollination between these two tech-focused British manufacturers
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
This Kvadrat tote bag brings together two design luminaries, Raf Simons and Peter Saville
The Kvadrat/Raf Simons tote arrives in Peter Saville’s ‘Technicolour Fleck’ material, and is a symbolic gesture of the pair’s enduring personal relationship and long-running collaboration with the Danish textile house
By Jack Moss Published
-
Where next for Salone del Mobile? Maria Porro on the future of the world’s biggest furniture fair
Ahead of Salone del Mobile 2025 in Milan, we sit down with its president to talk design, data and forging the event’s future in a fast-changing world
By Hugo Macdonald Published
-
Desert X 2025 review: a new American dream grows in the Coachella Valley
Will Jennings reports from the epic California art festival. Here are the highlights
By Will Jennings Last updated
-
This rainbow-coloured flower show was inspired by Luis Barragán's architecture
Modernism shows off its flowery side at the New York Botanical Garden's annual orchid show.
By Tianna Williams Published
-
‘Psychedelic art palace’ Meow Wolf is coming to New York
The ultimate immersive exhibition, which combines art and theatre in its surreal shows, is opening a seventh outpost in The Seaport neighbourhood
By Anna Solomon Published
-
Wim Wenders’ photographs of moody Americana capture the themes in the director’s iconic films
'Driving without a destination is my greatest passion,' says Wenders. whose new exhibition has opened in New York’s Howard Greenberg Gallery
By Osman Can Yerebakan Published
-
20 years on, ‘The Gates’ makes a digital return to Central Park
The 2005 installation ‘The Gates’ by Christo and Jeanne-Claude marks its 20th anniversary with a digital comeback, relived through the lens of your phone
By Tianna Williams Published
-
In ‘The Last Showgirl’, nostalgia is a drug like any other
Gia Coppola takes us to Las Vegas after the party has ended in new film starring Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl
By Billie Walker Published
-
‘American Photography’: centuries-spanning show reveals timely truths
At the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Europe’s first major survey of American photography reveals the contradictions and complexities that have long defined this world superpower
By Daisy Woodward Published
-
Miami’s new Museum of Sex is a beacon of open discourse
The Miami outpost of the cult New York destination opened last year, and continues its legacy of presenting and celebrating human sexuality
By Anna Solomon Published