Adam Henry

"My eyes are in my eyes"

–Aram Saroyan

Energy

Over time I have come to think of a painting as a battery. It holds energy and ideas. These ideas and energies are accessed by looking, by seeing, and by engaging with the painting. I call this handshaking. I did not invent the term, but I like what it signifies. Besides the most obvious human connection, handshaking is also used to explain the engagement when a personal computer connects to a server or network. The terms of engagement for painting are contextual. They include the gallery space, the light, the weather, the city, our mood; all other art works in our memory.

Color

Color is an integer—it measures time and space; it is an alphabet; it is spatial; it is both the physical and visual representation of incremental change. When we talk of color we don’t speak of the color itself, rather we speak of our experience of it. This makes color special in its ultimate subjectivity.

Coordinates

I created three paintings of a rotating theoretical color diagram. These paintings act as X, Y, and Z coordinates. Each individual painting will be given away at the end of the exhibition under the contingency that each painting is in turn given away to another participant after six months. This will on indefinitely. The paintings’ provenance and locations will be logged and displayed on a website devoted to their history. These paintings are not commodifiable and their value is in the network of experience.

Adam Henry (b. Pueblo, CO) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received his MFA from the Yale School of Art and a double major BFA in Art and Art History from the University of New Mexico. His most recent solo exhibition was at Meessen De Clercq Gallery (Brussels, Belgium) in 2015. Recent group exhibitions include David Petersen Gallery (Minneapolis) Villa Merkel (Esslingen, Germany), Kansas Gallery (New York), Marianne Boesky Gallery (New York), Lucien Terras Gallery (New York), and Stefan Lundgren Gallery (Palma de Mallorca, Spain). Meessen De Clercq recently published a monograph focusing on the last five years of Henry’s work.