NYAB Event - Adam Henry “Alien Beatnik Siren”

Adam Henry “Alien Beatnik Siren”

Joe Sheftel Gallery

This event has ended.

“A system is as human as a splash of paint, more so when the splash gets routinized.”
—Lawrence Alloway, “Systemic Painting,” 1966

Joe Sheftel Gallery presents Alien Beatnik Siren, Adam Henry’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Alien Beatnik Siren is an installation of fourteen nearly identical paintings hung symmetrically on the sidewalls of the gallery. With this exhibition Henry furthers his explorations into the relationship between the psychological and the optical by attempting to create the same painting fourteen times. Knowing that this is impossible, the artist embraces the anomalies that happen through the process of making each individual painting. This takes a firm stand against the fetishization of authenticity and Henry explores differentiation through repetition rather than through variation.

The sequence of these paintings provides an opportunity to investigate the multiplicity of experience and an uncanny notion of time. The glowing surfaces of these works parallel the backlit screens that have become the primary way images are both delivered and consumed. Henry has expressed interest in painting’s ability to project light as opposed to reflecting it and, as such, he is concerned with painting’s ability to slow down a viewer and highlights experience over consumption. Paintings are activated when looked at and a painting must be looked at many times before it can be seen.