BIOGRAPHY

Marina Adams utilises a distinct palette of rich, saturated hues to create biomorphic forms that undulate and press together with pulsating energy. Sampling motifs from textile design, architecture, and postmodern poetry, as well as Moorish mosaics like the tessellated walls in the Alhambra palace in Grenada, Spain, Adams responds to colour and form as she paints, resulting in a rhythmic relationship between the two. When speaking about her work, Adams has said that abstraction creates space for thought, rather than dictating it; it opens up the opportunity for experience.

Marina Adam’s vibrant, kinetic acrylic on linen works are a combination of both structure and improvisation. Soft, undulating forms cross paths within the structure of the painting. Nestled together they manage to act both in complete harmony but still hold their own unique power and personality. The shapes within feel slippery, their grip on each other never feeling completely stable. Instead Adams imbues these forms with the potential to shift and move creating a rhythmic, dynamic tension between line, colour and form. These sweeping shapes create the framework for the sumptuous swathes of paint that Adams creates using her own distinct, vivid colour palette. With layered, overlapping bodies of colour the paintings seem to be illuminated from within, pulsating just beneath the surface.

In Adam’s work we can see the legacy of artists such as Hilma af Klint, Sonia Delaunay, and Piet Mondrian, who embraced the elemental, accessible, and non-hierarchical potential of abstract painting. When gazing upon Adams lush canvases we can sense that the idea of the painting is not really the point, it is about the act of standing in front of them, of calming down and searching for a measure of peace. Adams skilfully creates an encounter with her work that is non-narrative, carving out a generous painterly space for thought and experience.

Marina Adams was born in Orange, NJ, USA in 1960. She lives in Manhattan, and maintains studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and Parma, Italy. Past solo exhibitions of her work include Flower Power at Von Bartha, DK (2022); Wild Is Its Own Way at Stephen Friedman Gallery, UK (2021); Anemones at Salon 94, NY (2019); Soft Power at Salon 94, NY (2017); Galerie Gris, Hudson, NY (2013) and (2015); Marina Adams: Coming Thru Strange at Hionas gallery, NY, (2013); Marina Adams at CUE art Foundation, NY, (2008) and The Nature of Line, at Magazzino d’arte Moderna, Rome, Italy (1997). Her work was featured in Making & Unmaking: An exhibition curated by Duro Olowu at the Camden Arts Centre, London, UK (2016); Her work has been included in recent group exhibitions at the Camden Arts Centre, London; Lisson Gallery, New York; American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; and The Center for Contemporary Art, Bedminster, New Jersey. Adams received the Award of Merit Medal for Painting from the Academy of Arts and Letters and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. In 2020, Adams will be the focus of a solo exhibition at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, USA.

“Colour is just about everything in Adams’s work, and everything seems animated, in movement. The energy impelling this motion is never agitated or frantic but rather feels steady, relaxed and spontaneously responsive. Viewing her work is like being in the passenger seat next to a driver who knows how to take the road with supreme dexterity and implicit attentiveness; you feel safe at any speed”

Barry Schwabsky, Art Forum, September 2019

THE SECRET OF GREEK GRAMMAR, 2019