ADAM HENRY:
IN SPECTRAL FORM

Joe Shef­tel Gallery is pleased to announce In Spec­tral Form, the first New York solo exhi­bi­tion by Adam Henry. Henry inves­ti­gates the basic logic of paint­ing by reorder­ing its ele­ments: he fuses color, splices can­vas, and folds paint­ing sur­faces. His exper­i­ments with spec­tral arrays and intri­cate paths con­jure philoso­phies of space, ancient tex­tiles, and new tech­nolo­gies.

Just as a spec­trum forms when light is dis­persed, Henry’s emul­sion paint­ings dis­play bands of color mov­ing as forces through the spec­trum of red to vio­let. When red and blue meet a vio­let haze forms; oppo­sites yel­low and vio­let col­lide and dis­si­pate, cre­at­ing the lim­i­nal state D.H. Lawrence calls “good obliv­ion.” Henry’s wet-into-wet tech­nique cap­tures the alchemy of col­ors’ inter­ac­tions.

Through­out Henry’s paint­ings, the con­cept of spec­trum struc­tures a vari­able uni­verse. Henry also explores painting’s forms by incre­men­tally com­press­ing and inter­min­gling paint, ground, and sup­port­ing fab­ric. In the Path paint­ings, indi­vid­ual drops of paint are care­fully laid into the open weave of jute, giv­ing the effect of fab­ric being pulled apart, allow­ing the front and back of the paint­ing sur­face to be viewed simul­ta­ne­ously. The drops of paint cre­ate a con­tin­u­ous line loop, tra­vers­ing the very struc­ture of the weave. Other paint­ings are phys­i­cally woven, turn­ing inside out as strips cut from the sur­face fold back in on itself. Uti­liz­ing recur­ring shapes and forms, Henry cre­ates door­ways for the viewer to enter his work, reveal­ing and expli­cat­ing hid­den anom­alies in the mechan­ics of per­cep­tion.

A woven blan­ket, clan­des­tine dia­grams, beams of col­ored light, blind spots, and embed­ded codes: his repeated pat­terns dis­play how small vari­a­tions cre­ate entry to many cog­ni­tive loca­tions.

Adam Henry grew up in Santa Fe, NM, and lives in Brook­lyn, NY. He received a BFA dou­ble major in Art and Art His­tory from Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico, and holds a Paint­ing MFA from the Yale School of Art. He has par­tic­i­pated in many res­i­den­cies, includ­ing the LMCC at World Trade Cen­ter, Skowhe­gan, and is cur­rently a Work­space Artist at Dieu Donne in New York. In 2011 he was artist in res­i­dence at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­sity, and in Jan­u­ary 2012 he deliv­ered a vis­it­ing artist lec­ture at the Uni­ver­sity of Cincin­nati. His work has been shown in venues includ­ing Mid­way Con­tem­po­rary Art in Min­neapo­lis, Ke Cen­ter for Con­tem­po­rary Art in Shang­hai, Por­tu­gal Arte Bien­nial, and numer­ous group exhi­bi­tions in New York. His paint­ings were included in Joe Shef­tel Gallery’s inau­gural exhi­bi­tion.