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
-
Extreme Cashmere reimagines retail with its new Amsterdam store: ‘You want to take your shoes off and stay’Wallpaper* takes a tour of Extreme Cashmere’s new Amsterdam store, a space which reflects the label’s famed hospitality and unconventional approach to knitwear
-
Titanium watches are strong, light and enduring: here are some of the bestBrands including Bremont, Christopher Ward and Grand Seiko are exploring the possibilities of titanium watches
-
Warp Records announces its first event in over a decade at the Barbican‘A Warp Happening,' landing 14 June, is guaranteed to be an epic day out
-
Leonard Baby's paintings reflect on his fundamentalist upbringing, a decade after he left the churchThe American artist considers depression and the suppressed queerness of his childhood in a series of intensely personal paintings, on show at Half Gallery, New York
-
Desert X 2025 review: a new American dream grows in the Coachella ValleyWill Jennings reports from the epic California art festival. Here are the highlights
-
This rainbow-coloured flower show was inspired by Luis Barragán's architectureModernism shows off its flowery side at the New York Botanical Garden's annual orchid show.
-
‘Psychedelic art palace’ Meow Wolf is coming to New YorkThe ultimate immersive exhibition, which combines art and theatre in its surreal shows, is opening a seventh outpost in The Seaport neighbourhood
-
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
-
20 years on, ‘The Gates’ makes a digital return to Central ParkThe 2005 installation ‘The Gates’ by Christo and Jeanne-Claude marks its 20th anniversary with a digital comeback, relived through the lens of your phone
-
In ‘The Last Showgirl’, nostalgia is a drug like any otherGia Coppola takes us to Las Vegas after the party has ended in new film starring Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl
-
‘American Photography’: centuries-spanning show reveals timely truthsAt the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Europe’s first major survey of American photography reveals the contradictions and complexities that have long defined this world superpower
