Marina Adams: 2020

Salon 94 is pleased to present a selection of new drawings by Marina Adams made in New York during quarantine. Marina Adams: 2020 will be the first exhibition at Salon 94 that focuses exclusively on her drawing practice. The handwork of the drawings vibrate with musicality and spontaneity and are themselves evident of the underlying structure of pattern familiar across her practice. On this new body of work, Adams notes, “I’ve been thinking about allowing the line to enter the work in a much more chaotic way. For me, drawing is the first step in opening up the work and allowing it to change.”

Marina Adams’ experimental new works represent an evolution in her practice. In her embrace of the chaotic, she has worked to relinquish control, allowing the shifting and unpredictable state of the world at large – from the global pandemic to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement - to enter into the drawings more forcefully. The result is an electrifying body of work from which patterns begin to unfold. Ever a colorist, Adams begins her drawings by laying down sequences of interconnected diamonds which she fills with deep shades of contrasting hues. Some of these grids appear to be sliding off of the page while others ground the work with a physical intensity. These underlying patterns become the foundation from which Adams’ hand takes flight. In each work, she creates a network of oscillating apertures and frenzied pathways that crisscross the surface with a palpable force. In many ways, her 2020 drawings are direct transcriptions of the world outside: they are decentralized, unstable, raw. They are disruptive yet creative, allowing us to imagine a new world order.

“We can see pattern in the most basic things, and I guess what I love is that it forces you to get very basic, and it’s in basic truths that we can find communion. We find how we’re alike, as opposed to always thinking about how we’re different.… And all those barriers and borders that are put up by race, religion, language and nation-states can be overcome.”

-Marina Adams

* In lieu of a discount, 10% of all sales will go to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Click here to download

This conversation took place via phone call on May 31 4:01PM- 5:02PM

Within the last 72 hours, America has reached 100,000 COVID-19 related deaths, we witnessed the first launch of a privately owned shuttle into space and the murder of George Floyd has sparked an uprising. Yet we still go to the studio, right?

Actually right now, getting to the studio has been very problematic. I was in the city under lockdown for over two months and I could not get to my studio in Brooklyn. So, I’ve been working in sketchbooks at home and reading a lot. With this new routine, I’ve fallen into another kind of rhythm. But, I think the idea of an artist going to the studio right now is important to be addressed, because I’m not sure that what artists do is fully understood. Especially during volatile times, like right now, when there is so much pent up frustration aided by the lockdown. This is especially true in neighborhoods that don’t have access to space or resources. The blatant murder of George Floyd put everyone over the top. I think this has been a long time coming and I really thought that cities were going to explode this summer. Three years into having a white supremacist in the White House whose done nothing but fan the flames, it was bound to erupt.

I saw an Instagram post of yours where you shared works on paper and drawings since you couldn’t get to the studio. Were you prepared for the disruption that came to your practice? Did it realign what was happening in your mind regarding the work?

For me, two things happened. First, I realized how exhausted I was. Not being able to go out allowed me to really rest and recover. In a larger sense, the whole world has been running at an unsustainable pace. In the art world, you have people flying all over the place for fairs, etc.

In terms of the drawings, I’ve been thinking about allowing the line to enter the work in a much more chaotic way. For me, drawing is the first step in opening up the work and allowing it to change; it’s fast, inexpensive, and very direct. This time out of the studio allowed me to move into a space that I had been thinking about, of chaos and the chaotic. It has to do with thinking about the world in a larger way, in terms of non-human life. We use the term “nature” and it’s such a cover all but really what we’re talking about is non-human life and we tend to forget about that. For example, trees are thought of as decoration, which is also about human control. My thinking was to go against that, and give up control, allowing a kind of chaotic energy to enter into the work more forcefully.  Even in the chaos of the cosmos there is pattern and structure; one could say that there is clarity. What I wanted to try and do is to allow chaos in, uncontrolled in the same way and find the clarity within that. How that is going to enter the paintings, I’m not quite sure.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL INTERVIEW 

CLICK HERE TO READ ARTHUR PEÑA'S OTHER INTERVIEWS