Brian Wehrung was born in 1960 in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH with a degree in engineering. After completing his studies, he moved to Boston where he worked in high technology product development for the next 13 years. During his time living in the Boston area, he enjoyed spending time at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and visiting art galleries on Newbury Street.
In 1997, Brian moved to Silicon Valley to join a high tech startup company. As an outlet for some of his creative energy, Brian started to explore the unique architecture of his new surroundings. In 2009, he moved to New Mexico where the bright colors, textures and forms of New Mexico’s architecture heavily influenced his photographs and solidified the style that he had begun to develop in California. In 2010, Brian Wehrung moved back to California. His talents as a photographer have blossomed while photographing diverse subject matter including airports, apartment buildings, casinos, colleges, hotels, industrial complexes, libraries, malls, municipal buildings, office buildings, schools, universities and vintage cars
As an entirely self taught artist, Brian had started pursuing his passion for photography as a hobby. Brian started taking photographs as a child with a Kodak Instamatic camera and worked through a number of Pentax, Minolta, and Canon film cameras until discovering digital.
The mathematical mind behind his photographs is apparent for all to see. The highly technical training that Brian received while studying engineering continues to influence his photographic style. As his photography has matured, it is clear that Brian possesses a talent for identifying geometric abstraction in the architecture of urban settings. His architectural photographs emphasize the basic geometric forms from which many complex objects are created. The resulting photographs tend to be minimalistic in nature.
Brian describes his photographic style as Extractive Reductionism. According to Brian Wehrung, he defines Extractive Reductionism “as the process of extracting details from large complex objects in a way that reduces those objects to their basic constituent properties of color, line and shape. The deconstruction of these objects and the attendant removal of context creates images that are simultaneously abstract yet concrete.” Brian’s photographic style borrows from Minimalism, Suprematism, Formalism, Color Field Painting, Topographics, and technical drawing.
CONTACT: brianwehrung@gmail.com
The architectural images, emphasize the basic geometric forms from which many complex objects are created while the automotive images focus on the seemingly endless variety of curves and angles that metal can be formed in to. Both result in images that tend to be minimalistic in nature.
What is most striking about the photography of Brian Wehrung is his extraordinary talent to capture geometric abstraction within the context of large-scale structures and make them accessible to the viewer. Also, he has a remarkable ability to capture each of his photos from an ideal perspective. Although the photographs of Brian Wehrung cover a wide range of subject matter, some of the recurring elements include his ability to capture the incredible beauty of the brightly colored block like buildings dotting the urban landscape of the American West and Southwest with a unique perspective, extracting details from large architectural structures and creating geometric abstraction puzzles to ponder.
Automobiles are another subject, which Brian Wehrung has explored with his unique perspective. His automotive photographs focus on the seemingly endless variety of curves and angles that can be formed from metal.
Brian’s work has been seen at the Affordable Art Fair in NYC in 2014 and 2016 and the Rod Dot Miami show in 2014. His work has been printed in Savoir Tout faire en Photographie: La Ville, Sept/Oct 2014, Boston Review, Jan/Feb 2015, Elle Decoration UK, May 2015, and RUM, Sweden, Feb 2016
Brian Wehrung lives and works in San Diego, California.
On-line writeups:
The Woven Tale Press Vol V #2, 2017
Print Magazines:
Savoir Tout faire en Photographie: La Ville, Sept/Oct 2014
Boston Review, Jan/Feb 2015
Elle Decoration UK, May 2015
tidskriftenRUM, Sweden, Feb 2016