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| John Chamberlain, Untitled, 1989 |
I am very familiar with John Chamberlain’s
imposing and powerfully present sculptures made of car scrap metal, and had
been enchanted by their exhibition at Marfa in Texas when I visited a couple of
years ago. But I didn’t know the photographs that he has been making since the
1990s, and yet, he has produced a substantial body of photographic work over
the past twenty years or so.
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| John Chamberlain, Untitled, 1995 |
Of course, the images are gorgeous. I say
“of course” because one of the binding characteristics of the art produced at Black
Mountain College where Chamberlain studied briefly in the mid-1950s is the
exploration of a certain modernist aesthetic that, in turn, emphasizes the pre-eminence
of that same aesthetic. It is true that in the case of minimalist works of
artists such as John Cage, Allan Kaprow, or even the not-yet-realized Abstract
Expressionism of Rauschenberg, they have pushed the aesthetic into unknown and
impossible places, pushed towards removal of all aesthetic ornamentation.
However, the work of this generation of artists tends to reinforces the beauty
of a modernist aesthetic, albeit a different kind of beauty. Thus, it is not
surprising that Chamberlain’s photographs are sumptuous, discrete objects that,
within their frame, ask that we stand outside of them and admire their aesthetic
exploration.
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| John Chamberlain, Untitled, 1996 |
What is innovative and what makes Chamberlain’s
photographs exciting is their mode production. He works with a Widelux camera,
a fully mechanical swing-lens panoramic camera first developed in Japan in 1948,
and used to document rural and urban landscapes. The camera has a pivoting 26mm
lens that enables a 126 degree horizontal view: the resulting image can best be
described as a representation of time in motion.
 |
| John Chamberlain, Untitled, 1996 |
In their beauty, distortion and their push
towards abstraction, Chamberlain’s photographs reminded me of Cy Twombly’s
photographs – another Black Mountain College alumni. There is something
painterly and ethereal in the way that the camera and Chamberlain’s process
renders light in motion across the scene of a public space, at night, and at
times, in broad, bright daylight. At times, in images such as both of the Untitled, 1996 above, light in motion
becomes the echo of a brushstroke as it passes eloquently across a canvas. The
reminder of Twombly’s photographs aside, the clear progenitors of Chamberlain’s
photographs are the Hungarian André Kertesz’s distortions of the female body.
That said, the visual coincidence and the visual abstraction of concrete form
is all that connects them with Kertesz’s mirrored de-formations. Chamberlain is
interested in a more expansive, more public landscape, namely urban
environments and locations.
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| John Chamberlain, Untitled, 1992 |
In keeping with their pursuit of
abstraction, though the photographs
— at least the ones exhibited at Galerie Karsten Greve — are typically
taken in urban environments, namely New York City, Paris, they are very much in
keeping with what Chamberlain does with the car metal. Like the sculptures, these
images come to resemble organic forms and natural worlds: curvilinear
distortions that might be water flowing and reflecting, or sunsets reflecting
on mirrored lenses. Human beings, often Chamberlain himself, also flow and
morph into forms and shapes that have nothing to do with the complications of
urban sophistication.
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| John Chamberlain, 888 Light, 1990 |
For all of the beauty of Chamberlain’s
photographs —and every visitor will be charmed by these images — I am still not
convinced that there is anything after the techniques and formal distortions.
The colors and manipulation of light are mesmerizing, but the images of New
York are not so different from those of Paris, to the point where I wonder if
he is not perhaps doing the same thing over and over again? But again, given
the clear modernist pursuit of and fascination with the medium and aesthetic
renderings, perhaps this is just the point? And, to be sure, I can't think of any other artist who is collapsing the interstice between painting, photography and cinema with quite the same degree of innovation and sophistication.
All images courtesy Galerie Karsten Greve and the Artist
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