John Chamberlain

Flashback VI, John Chamberlain

1981

John Chamberlain, in full John Angus Chamberlain, was an American sculptor, painter, photographer, printmaker, and filmmaker whose Abstract Expressionist works were characterized by an emotional approach to concept and execution. 

Chamberlain studied at the Art Institute of Chicago (1951–52), where he began working in metals, and at Black Mountain College in North Carolina (1955–56). In 1957 he had his first one-man show in Chicago. His early pieces were made from welded iron rods, but he later used such materials as heat-shaped Plexiglass, paper, polyurethane, industrial rubber, brown paper bags, and aluminum foil before returning in 1974 to the use of auto body parts. His first sculpture to employ car parts was Shortstop (1957), which featured rusty fenders that he had found in the yard of painter and friend Larry Rivers. 

Chamberlain’s sculptures are typified by Mr. Press (1961), a construction of fragments from automobiles, crumpled and jammed together to create an effect of isolated, frozen movement. He often coated his pieces with bright industrial paints. During the 1970s oil crisis, Chamberlain often incorporated oil barrels into his work, notably in the series Socket and Kiss (1979). For a brief interlude, he used car spray paint to create works that combined stencil and Action painting. Chamberlain was also involved in video and film and produced the cinematic Wide Point (1968); he later dabbled in drawing and printmaking. 

In 1971 Chamberlain’s work was given a retrospective by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

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(Biography provided by Graves International Art)