ADAM FUSS
2015-09-28Born in London in 1961, Fuss has lived in New York for over thirty years. Known for his experimental work with the earliest photographic techniques, notably daguerreotypes and photograms, Fuss has long explored the natural world and its symbolic manifestations. His camera-less images, captured by a flash of light on a light-sensitive surface, are at once immediate and timeless, spontaneous in conception but profound in the emotional responses they provoke. In his new work, Fuss continues to balance this and other dichotomies (dark/light, presence/absence, life/death), but introduces a new approach to his process. Instead of assembling his imagery on a horizontal surface, shooting from above, Fuss creates the images vertically. An agitated pool suddenly becomes a waterfall.
In Fuss’s photograms of water, verticality and its implied movement are integral to his intentions. The image-making process is less predictable, and the work is focused instead on the event and its result—which, as he says, is “a photographic representation of energy”—rather than on its materiality. Monumental in scale at just over 9 feet tall, the images engulf the viewer, and in this way are reminiscent of Abstract Expressionist canvases, particularly the gestural drips of Jackson Pollock or the cool verticality of Barnett Newman’s “zip” paintings. History, however, does not weigh Fuss’s work. As with much of his imagery, the seeming simplicity of his sources (water falling, snakes slithering) is belied by the depth and variety of possible readings, allowing for complex associations and interpretations. The expressiveness conveyed in these works is also contrasted by the impressive technical feats by which they are made.
Exhibition runs through to October 17th, 2015
Cheim & Read
547 W 25th St
New York
NY 10001
