FOCUS: Marina Adams

On view November 6, 2020 - January 10, 2021.
Contemporary artist Marina Adams will show seven energetic abstract paintings from the past four years that are immersive in scale, as well as recent small gouache works on paper. Adams explores the relationship between color and shape in her acrylic-on-linen paintings, where organic forms of solid color abut and interlock. Her work balances organization and improvisation; she sketches out her compositions before she paints, but there is an immediacy made obvious by loose, confident brushstrokes, where drips and bands of color overlap.
Though abstract, Adams’s paintings are rooted in textile design and architecture. As she stated in a Brooklyn Rail interview, “Pattern is a language that crosses boundaries. It offers common ground.” As similar patterns have historically been found in far-flung locations not likely to have been in contact, it is clear certain designs are elemental and primal, and in these synchronicities, as she says, “we find how we’re alike, as opposed to always thinking about how we’re different.”
Literature and history also play important roles in Adams’s work, especially in her use of referential titles. For example, Cheops, 2018, which is included in this exhibition, refers to the ancient Egyptian pharaoh for whom the Great Pyramid of Giza was built, and the painting’s composition echoes pyramidal forms. Such references offer viewers a literary path of entry into her art.