NOHRA HAIME
GALLERY USA | New York | 57th Street
NOVEMBER
23, 2016-JANUARY 14, 2017
The work of
Adam Straus, spanning a three and a half decade career, will be on view at
Nohra Haime Gallery and Adelson Galleries from November 23, 2016 – January 14,
2017. The two exhibitions at 730 Fifth Avenue will showcase paintings, works on
paper, sculpture, and photography. Straus is known for his majestic and
luminous depictions of the sublime, which are often saturated with a deep
concern about social and environmental issues. His penetrating dark humor can
transport the viewer to post-apocalyptic worlds and often offers a wry
observation on how humans have altered the natural landscape. The exhibitions
coincide with the publication of a new monograph (Gli Ori, Italy, November
2016). An opening reception will be held on Tuesday, November 22, from 6-8 p.m.
With more
than 40 works, the exhibition at Nohra Haime Gallery will survey Straus’s
oeuvre from 1979 to 2016. While the focus will be on paintings and works on
paper, Straus’s little-known photography and sculpture from the early 1980s
will provide context for his later transition to painting. A number of the
works are from private collections and will be on public view for the first
time. At Adelson Galleries, the exhibition will focus on 14 paintings on canvas
and works on paper from 2011 to 2016, many of which, in a witty and irreverent
manner, refer to how technology alters our view of nature. Straus’s cinematic
expanses are sometimes painted on jute, which provides a rough surface that
softens the image and creates the look of a screen.
As Amei
Wallach writes in the essay for the book, “Think of the sheer pigheaded guts it
took for as serious and ambitious an artist as Adam Straus to become a landscape
painter in the 1980s. A century had passed since Cézanne torqued his trees into
astringent meditations on the nature of painting; decades since the Abstract
Expressionists swallowed the genre whole. The tradition into which Straus dared
to tread … was sorely in need of reanimation. His disruptions in the years
since have unsettled received assumptions as much through dark humor and
bravura painting as through offering a reassessment of what it means to paint
the beauty of nature in ugly times. It is important to him that his paintings
are accessible… But that is only the
first, skin-deep level, and it is animated by compound subterranean layers of
passionate conviction, cosmic yearning, and comedy.”
Among the
highlights at Nohra Haime Gallery will be McStop, 1993, in which a tiny
depiction of the golden arches of McDonald’s dots an otherwise pristine evening
setting. The painting was inspired by a view on a cross-country road trip in
the American Midwest.
Contact
details
730 Fifth
Avenue, 7th floor , 57th Street - New York, NY, USA
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