Images of delicately carved plant life combined with 80,000 volts of electricity and a light source the diameter of a human hair surprise viewers and transform everyday matter into artworks that celebrate nature’s mysteries.
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In a new exhibition titled every thing shines at Shari Brownfield Fine Art, cameraless photographs by world renowned artist Robert Buelteman appear to glow from the walls, taking the viewer outside of the ordinary, and inside the energy of our natural world. While these works are an evolution of photography, they were created with neither camera, nor lens, nor computer.
Robert Buelteman (b. 1954) grew up in the then sleepy town of Woodside, CA, whose environment cultivated a deep love of nature in the artist. That love inspired Buelteman to render the landscape in traditional analog black-and-white to much acclaim, including three award winning monographs. After a revelation in 1999 he began to dream in color; and he knew that the time had come to do something new with his craft.
“I met the artist 20 years ago, at a time when he had just shifted from a very successful career in traditional black-and-white landscape photography. The enthusiasm he had for his art and process was overwhelming, and I gave him one of his first shows of this now widely exhibited body of work” says Brownfield. That new body of work was the culmination of a year of experimentation that included thousands of sheets of photographic film and several electrical shocks, yet most importantly, a portfolio celebrating the natural world. Whether working in black-and-white or in his cameraless portfolio, Buelteman’s mission is always the same: to make the unseen, seen.
Buelteman’s process is unpredictable and often unmanageable, yet he finds comfort in surrendering to fate and serendipity. “Process-based art is typically visible,” explained Brownfield, “yet his process is invisible to the viewer. It becomes a mystery, where we question what it is we are seeing, and how this came to be.”
Buelteman’s art has received accolades from institutions as diverse as the United States Congress, the Commonwealth Club of California, Committee for Green Foothills, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. In recent years his art has been the subject of essays in 23 languages on six continents around the globe, and can be found in public and private collections worldwide, including the Yale University Art Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Denver Botanical Gardens, the San Francisco Airport, Bank of America, Adobe Systems, Stanford University, Xerox, and Nikon.
The exhibition every thing shines will run from July 19 to September 3, 2021. The opening reception is on July 22, from 4-7pm, with the artist in attendance.
Shari Brownfield Fine Art –located on artsy Glenwood Street in the ‘little log cabin’ – offers art advisory and appraisal services, as well as seasonal exhibitions.
Shari Brownfield Fine Art
every thing shines is on view from July 19 – September 3, 2021
Opening reception: July 22, 4-7pm
55 South Glenwood Street, Jackson WY 83001
Open weekdays 9-5 and by appointment