Fifty24SF Gallery

ADAM HARTEAU

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(1977, Los Angeles, US)

This self-made artist, Adam Harteau, works adroitly in a flurry of mediums, each informing the other, and serving its creative purpose as the project presents itself. An imaginative artist, designer, draftsman and problem solver, he moves with ease between painting, photography, drawing, collage, printmaking, sculpture, graphic and fashion design. At 18, he moved to Los Angeles to attend Otis College of Art and Design, where he received a scholarship for fine art painting. He has remained in Los Angeles since then, balancing his diverse and eclectic artistic endeavors with grand explorations of the world, which have all brought great inspiration to his life and work.

Watch Adam, Emily and the rest of the Harteau family take a break from their endless travels to join us as the next in our Dreamers + Doers series. See what it really takes to start a life of adventure, a family and an exciting new business from the open road:

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ADAM CURRY

in ,

(Vancouver, Canada)

Curry works exclusively with oil-based paints and varnishes on wood, classical tools and methods chosen for their proven stability over hundreds of years of art history. His paintings reveal his preoccupation with concepts related to disorder and change, especially the ever present relationship between the cityscape and the unpredictable forest.

Adam has been painting since 1985, after graduating with a Diploma of Fine Arts from Emily Carr College of Art and Design. His practice incorporates a wide range of available technology: digital photography, the world wide web, as source materials, having them reproduced electronically, and then applying Dammar Varnish layered oil  – sometimes 20 layers deep – painting techniques to create optical effects. Images are captured with a cell phone camera, then printed in large-scale format by a shop specializing in blueprints.

Layers of tinted varnish serve to gorgeously illustrate Curry’s concept that the conquered forests of Vancouver, are continually returning, threatening to blur the clean lines of the human landscape, even in the midst of the concrete jungle. His work references the past while challenging our notions of modern painting. Adam moves the viewer on a cinematically inspired narrative sometimes historical, sometimes fantastic or experimental in theme. The paintings in a series engage the viewer with wit and humour to reveal linear and nonlinear patterns.

Watch Adam Curry at Polychrome Fine Art:

ADAM CALDWELL

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(1963, Massachusetts, US)

Adam's paintings and drawings juxtapose elements of abstract expressionism and classical figuration. Throwing in layers of images of ancient ruins, social protest, war, and architecture, he seeks to explore  the contemporary depiction of sexy, southern, white-trash women, who are a stereotypical result of writings by Caldwell’s grandfather. 

During his training at the California College of Arts and Crafts, he began to create collage drawings that layered disparate images on top of one another; he now uses oil paint in a similar way, starting with an abstract background and then adding more photorealistic details, allowing the work to dictate its own construction. The resulting palimpsest of figures and abstract shapes represents the conflicted and paradoxical emotions that underlie his work.

Caldwell's paintings evoke the tensions between mind and body, self and other, present and past. They also raise questions about the nature of identity, particularly concerning issues of gender and sexuality. He is deeply concerned about the world around him, and his work reflects his reactions to social issues such as war and consumerism by contrasting images from American advertisements and popular culture with images of rituals from around the world.