“You are an alchemist; make gold of that” – William Shakespeare.
Chuck Kelton, Artist, Master Printer, Educator, and photographic visionary has done just that.
Using only traditional black and white photographic chemicals and traditional light sensitive photographic paper, Kelton creates vivid landscapes that dance with movement. The result is a version of reality that evokes both chaos and stability and adds the additional comfort of this world having been Dipped In Gold.
A photogram is made by exposing photosensitive paper to light; a chemigram is created by exposing light sensitive paper to chemicals. In Kelton’s work you see the nods to great manipulators of the process, alchemists, artists, and scientists: Pierre Cordier, Talbot, Le Gray, Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy. His work is alive, infused with the history of photography, creating a new visual ideology. He frequently combines techniques in a single image. Selecting tools, as a master would, and using chance, chemistry, oxidized paper, and liquified metals, Kelton performs, allowing these works to emerge from his imagination into spectacular images of something we may have seen. The oxidized paper becomes the canvas. The works can take months to create, culminating with the appearance of richly detailed textures, linear shapes, or spheres of heavenly bodies. These works have the luminosity of traditional photography, with the physical and optical complexity of Leonardo’s legendary and mysterious landscapes.
As art history examines the photographic process, there is no doubt that Kelton’s name will designate the next leap forward. From his seminal series View Not from A Window to the selected works in this exhibition Dipped in Gold, his work is synonymous with cameraless photography. Kelton’s works have been exhibited around the world. He is in numerous collections, including The Getty Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Nelson-Atkins, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and The Morgan Library, to name a few.
