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Ever Gold Gallery
May 9 - June 7, 2014Info
441 O'Farrell Street San Francisco, CA 94102 Google Map »
A stab at the absurd through a simple exercise is the foundation for Adam Parker Smith’s third solo exhibition at Ever Gold Gallery, Seriously.
The exercise begins as such:
One stands before a mirror and looks directly into their eyes.
They wait until they realize they are being watched.
They look away and the exercise ends.
Smith’s new work objectifies a crisis that occurs when one does not look away once the exercise ends. Seriously consists of a series of sculptures, photographs and multi-media flat works that catalyze the mind turning in on itself, and celebrates the awareness of one’s freedom and the consequences of accepting or rejecting that freedom.
Taking up the largest wall of the main gallery is Preggers, a sculptural flat work in which a variety of spheres protrude through a wall of venetian blinds. This work depicts a farcical worldview that takes into account a nonsensical, boisterous type of humor that has grotesque implications.
Haunting and juvenile, a shadowy ghost is loosely rendered on canvas. Rock Hard in a Funky Place presses down on mounting uncertainties of the liquid fray of consciousness mixed with perturbing paraphilia. Unsuccessfully concealed is the painting’s erection, a maximization of a desire that is simultaneously a disinvestment in the “self” and a mirrored disorder.
In Smith’s most direct approach to grasp mortality, two legs dangle over the edge of a building in a large photograph, The Absurd. Smith suggests in this work that one recognizes that even the decision to either refrain from action or withhold assent to a particular choice is, in itself, a choice. In other words, humankind is "condemned" to freedom.