Adam

Veins of Gypsum Mortar

WHAT

Veins of Gypsum Mortar was a group installation, composed and fabricated with artist Victor Briestensky. This exhibition was conceived through an exchange of personal research into military fortifications, doomsday bunkers and other structures that premised protection and isolation. This research would assist us in constructing a scenic design for presenting personal works alongside six contributors.

HOW

VOGM involved the transformation of a tidy office into a dilapidated cellar. Faux brick walls, stained cardboard flooring, folly pipefittings, unsettling sounds and dim tungsten bulbs were employed to set a dystopic tone. Artworks were arranged in a claustrophobic manner throughout the installation to a point of indistinguishability from the encompassing environment.

WHY

A reciprocal observation of artists working with themes of pessimism, post humanism and precarity, whom reflected our personal interests, laid the foundation for VOGM. Briestensky and I’s primary inquiry with this exhibition was testing how a built environment might bolster or unify the mutual notions and explorations of the artists involved.

Meditations on Poison

WHAT

Meditations on Poison is an ongoing body of illustrative paintings. These images draw from visual languages of Traditional Chinese Medicine, comic books and anatomical diagrams. This project is the first step towards an autobiographical reflections on cultural history, bodily function and cognitive development.

How

The works draw from pencil drawings that have been laser-etched onto birch wood panels. Each panel has been treated with different patinas, including graphite, carbon paper, water-based adhesives amongst other materials. I will mount this constellation of images onto larger wooden sheets, hung at eye level

WHY

This project navigates a ground for cultural reflection that I have developed since departing from my home, Canada. Through displacement I can better identify with the experiences of cultural transition that my mother and father shared as foreigners and their respective relationships to Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western biomedicine.