David Adamo / James Castle Exhibition

Peter Freeman

poster for David Adamo / James Castle Exhibition

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Peter Freeman, Inc presents a new exhibition with artists David Adamo and James Castle. What had originally been planned to be two simultaneous one-person exhibitions has instead been purposefully integrated throughout the space: new work by Adamo installed in a dialogue with historic work by Castle, specially selected by Adamo.

For David Adamo’s inaugural exhibition at Peter Freeman Inc., the artist presents both new work and recent works shown for the first time in the US. Filling much of the space is his largest chalk floor to date: more than 1,800 square feet of school chalk laid in a herringbone pattern, mimicking a vast antique parquet floor. This massive installation is interrupted by Untitled (5 columns): wooden columns chiseled into emaciated forms, a frail juxtaposition with the iron Corinthian columns of the gallery. In another room, a shelf with 200 erasers made of clay is in direct dialogue with a second shelf of “pencils” and drawing tools made and used by Castle, and never before exhibited. Dispersed within the space are Adamo’s newest sculptures, a series of miniature radiators equipped with operating heating systems.

Historical works by James Castle, all selected by David Adamo in close collaboration with the James Castle Collection and Archive, Boise, Idaho, are presented throughout the exhibition. In most instances, Adamo has chosen drawings that have never been exhibited before, and will mostly be unknown even to those who are very familiar with Castle. Color, and the repetition of form, are the two major surprises in this exhibition, for Castle is best known for his precise and intimately rendered farm landscapes and building interiors drawn in soot on found paper. Many of the works chosen are in bright colors: one, a remarkable set of 60 renderings of the same figure, each its own distinct variation: another set of 35 drawings, all versions of a “Challenge Butter” package label. Adamo’s selection questions if the artist created each as a study of form and color, as a way to understand his own creative process, or simply the result of obsessive experimentation. A large group of text drawings will also be shown for the first time, as well as an unknown series of very precise, almost academic renderings of vases copied from an art school manual. In Adamo’s selection—very much that of one artist looking at another artist—Castle is shown to draw in a greater range of styles than many realize, and through Adamo’s eyes it is clear that every mode has as much quality and artistic insight as any of the soot drawings for which Castle has become so famous.

Born in Rochester, New York, in 1979, David Adamo has lived and worked in Berlin since 2008. Recent exhibitions include solo presentations at Mendes Wood, Sao Paolo (2013), MD72, Berlin (2013), Bielefeld Kunstverein (2012), Ibid Projects, London (2012), and Basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, in Bergamo (2011). The artist has also participated in many significant group exhibitions, including Based in Berlin organized by the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2011), No Sense of Place at Bergen Kunsthall, Norway (2011), The Whitney Biennial, New York (2010), and Greater New York at MoMA P.S.1, New York (2010). David Adamo’s exhibition continues at Untitled Gallery, located at 30 Orchard Street, where the artist is presenting a group of small-scale plaster termite mounds resembling those originally found in the African savanna, South America and Australia.

James Castle, born in 1899 in rural central Idaho, first came to the public eye in the early 1960’s. Recognition grew over the years, particularly after his death in 1977, resulting in the widely acclaimed retrospective organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2008 which travelled to Art Institute of Chicago in 2009 and UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2012. Castle’s oeuvre has also received international recognition with such exhibitions as James Castle: Show and Store coordinated by Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, in 2011. German artist Rosemarie Trockel included several of James Castles’ paper and twine bird sculptures as part of her recent retrospective presented in Museo Reina Sofia and New York’s New Museum, both in 2012, and Serpentine Gallery in London in 2013. The same selection of constructions by James Castle is currently on view at the Arsenale in Venice as part of the exhibition curated by Cindy Sherman for the 55th Art Biennale. Peter Freeman, Inc. represents the James Castle Collection and Archive.

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Schedule

from September 07, 2013 to October 19, 2013

Opening Reception on 2013-09-07 from 18:00 to 20:00

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