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Almine Rech

Justin Adian Heaven on the highway

Sep 6 — Oct 20, 2018 | Brussels
Inquire about the exhibition: inquiries@alminerech.com

Almine Rech Gallery is pleased to present the second solo exhibition by Justin Adian with the gallery.

For the past few years Justin Adian has been busy refining his practice. He works painting by painting, moving from one to the next based on the aesthetic implications he intuits in the most recent ones. Deeply engrossed in the physical labor of making each of them, ideas arise for Adian as a side-effect of his engagement with every aspect of their execution.

Despite the playfulness inherent to Adian’s vocabulary of plush organic forms and bright pastel colors, and even the inclusion of glitter in some paintings, he is always concerned with getting his work to operate successfully as abstract painting, which is to say, in relation to the formal issues that abstract painters have grappled with over the past century or so.

There is a bodily relationship to such hand-made lines, which—when combined with the pliability of his panels—means that we relate to them in terms of our own bodies, considering the way that one panel touches another as akin to how one person exists in proximity another.

This is not the first time that Adian has made use of stacked panels in his work, but it is his most emphatic. For Adian this is a way to evoke the compression of information that has long been a concern of his work, and also of contemporary society and culture more broadly. To layer is to both conceal and condense information, but it is also to nuance it and render it more complex. For these new accentuating panels are both physical and illusory, an actual object with a certain profile, and something that we read as a two-dimensional plane of color. The kind of information that Adian wants to deliver is, of course, painterly in nature—formal and pictorial, as his work remains fundamentally a juxtaposition of particular colors and shapes in space, delivered via his signature eccentric supports, with their soft materiality.

- Alex Bacon

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Selected artworks

  • Justin Adian,                                      Dance Party, 2018

    Justin Adian Dance Party, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and felt
    106,7 x 53,3 x 7,6 cm
    42 x 21 x 2 1/1 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      Black & Black, 2018

    Justin Adian Black & Black, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and felt
    94 x 83,8 x 7,6 cm
    37 x 33 x 3 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      Black & Black & Pink, 2018

    Justin Adian Black & Black & Pink, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and felt
    33 x 22,9 x 6,4 cm
    13 x 9 x 2 1/2 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      Upright, 2018

    Justin Adian Upright, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and felt
    177,8 x 20,3 cm
    70 x 8 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      Confluence, 2018

    Justin Adian Confluence, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and felt
    55,9 x 53,3 x 6,4 cm
    22 x 21 x 2 1/2 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      Pillow Talk, 2018

    Justin Adian Pillow Talk, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and felt
    81,3 x 66 x 6,4 cm
    32 x 26 x 2 1/2 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      Side Line, 2018

    Justin Adian Side Line, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and ester foam
    50,8 x 35,6 x 7,6 cm
    20 x 14 x 3 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      Tickler, 2018

    Justin Adian Tickler, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and ester foam
    127 x 86,4 x 6,4 cm
    50 x 34 x 2 1/2 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      Comforter, 2018

    Justin Adian Comforter, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and felt
    43,2 x 25,4 x 6,4 cm
    17 x 10 x 2 1/2 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      Passenger, 2018

    Justin Adian Passenger, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and ester foam
    100 x 55 x 10 cm
    39 3/8 x 21 5/8 x 3 7/8 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      Uppers, 2018

    Justin Adian Uppers, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and ester foam
    81,3 x 71,1 x 10,2 cm
    32 x 28 x 4 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      Silver Streak, 2018

    Justin Adian Silver Streak, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and felt
    119,4 x 99,1 x 6,4 cm
    47 x 39 x 2 1/2 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      Powdered, 2018

    Justin Adian Powdered, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and felt
    73,7 x 106,7 x 6,4 cm
    29 x 42 x 2 1/2 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      Moon Stoned, 2018

    Justin Adian Moon Stoned, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and felt
    139,7 x 109,2 x 6,4 cm
    55 x 43 x 2 1/2 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      High Moon, 2018

    Justin Adian High Moon, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and ester foam
    152,4 x 20,3 x 22,9 cm
    60 x 8 x 9 inches

  • Justin Adian,                                      Casual Pink, 2018

    Justin Adian Casual Pink, 2018

    Oil enamel on canvas and felt
    121,9 x 94 x 6,4 cm
    48 x 37 x 2 1/2 inches