SETTING SAIL IN A TEARDROP OF FEAR AND DESIRE
22ND OF JANUARY - 6TH OF MARCH 2016
ADAM SAKS
The exhibition “Setting sail in a teardrop of fear and desire” is planned as an artistic manifestation of one of the most talented and internationally acknowledged artists in the country. Adam Saks has previously done solo exhibitions in prominent museums and exhibition venues both nationally and internationally, but for the first time in his career, he will paint directly onto the walls and simultaneously present us with a range of completely new, large oil paintings created specifically for Kunsthal NORD.
Adam Saks works in the spread between figuration and abstraction and most often with an ambiguous conceptual framework. He utilises a specific form of motive – and image sampling, where he creates a variety of new stories by tearing image elements from their original context and reinstates them in different constellations.
Previously, Adam Saks has gathered his image elements from both the high- and low culture, and has most often been inspired by the human transgression of mental boundaries – whether that be the demonic opium cave or the tattooed body, with images from under the skin bears evidence of a life lived and existential basic terms.
The inspiration for several of the new pieces, which the exhibition in Kunsthal NORD will be built up around, Adam Saks has neither gathered from opium fogs nor body images, but from the utopian Monte Veritá – the Mountain of Truth, where a group of young pioneers started the first alternative society in the world in the beginning of the 20thcentury. Here they fought for cooperative systems, women’s liberation, free love and the desire for a fusion of the soul, spirit and body.
Adam Saks is educated from Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi in Copenhagen from 1993-1999, but has since then lived and worked in Berlin. His art is represented in a variety of public collections in Denmark, Finland, Sweden and France and has had solo exhibitions in Aros Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Städtische Galerie Offenburg, Galerie Forsblom in Helsinki, Radius in Stuttgart, Gallery Bourouina in Berlin and Nordiska Akvarellmuseet in Sweden.
Adam Saks has just been awarded Queen Sonja’s memorial grant, ‘Kjell Nupen Memorial Grant’, which consists of a work accommodation at the world famous workshop United Limited Art Editions in New York as well as a grant of 50.000 Norwegian kroner. It is awarded every other year to a Nordic artist who has excelled in graphic arts in particular.
Watch the video here: http://www.queensonjaprintaward.no/?page_id=5
Read the exhibition's paper
See or download the exhibition catalogue here
The exhibition is sponsored by: