Marina Adams
Marina Adams’ large-scale paintings display the artist’s deft use of palette. Fluently pushing color into form, Adams creates undulating, interlocking shapes that reveal a powerful internal rhythm beneath their surface simplicity. As the artist puts it, “Meaning and intellect in abstract art can be difficult to locate, as there is no narrative to lead us into it. It is like the voice itself. I use pattern and color to create the voice. And I use structure and form to channel it.” Adams’ vibrant compositions use saturated shades and sensual shapes to pack a graphic punch. While purely abstract, the works’ organic, free-flowing patterns are redolent of landscapes or bodies.
Unlike many contemporary artists, who deliberately blur the line between figurative and abstract, Adams’ current work is unabashedly—and exuberantly—abstract, allowing the artist to play with sheer color, form and pattern. Her work bears a Matisse-like connection to the intricate patterns of textiles. There is also a resonance with the rich designs of Moroccan rugs—and for that matter, those by Sonia Delaunay. Another inspiration for the artist has been Moorish mosaics, such as the magnificent tessellated walls in the Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain.
Marina Adams (American, b. Orange, NJ, 1960) lives in Manhattan, and maintains studios in Brooklyn and Parma, Italy. She was previously the subject of FOCUS: Marina Adams at The Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX (2020-21); Anemones at Salon 94 Bowery, New York, which was accompanied by her monograph (2019); and Making & Unmaking: An exhibition curated by Duro Olowu at the Camden Arts Centre, London, UK (2016). Adams has collaborated with several poets on publications which include Actualities with Norma Cole (Litmus Press, 2015); Portrait and a Dream with a poem by Charles Bernstein; Taormina with Vincent Katz (Kayrock, 2012); The Tango with Leslie Scalapino (Granary Books, 2001); and Vue sur Mer with Christian Prigent (Gervais Jassaud, 2010). She is a 2016 recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and received the 2018 Award of Merit Medal for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
