Scoring
In order to explain a piece of work – even more an artist’s practice in general –, it has become a comfortable approach to refer to space, as if this were an entity, something given, a situation already staged; instead, it is any thing, placed somewhere, constituting what only then can be perceived as space. Any art exhibition implicates the respective problem: objects, organized itself, organizing the condition of perceiving these objects. The works shown here seem to offer a specific awareness of that conceptional context: they function as intruders, making everything else give them an outline, and as excerpts, presenting what otherwise would stay a presumption.
In this case it is appropriate to suspend the notion that in art the sujet is arbitrary; even the distinction between subject and object matter, sometimes saved like a prestige, could be misleading. What can be seen, that is – to be modest at the first state –, what can be easily recognized in terms of motifs, are mushrooms, onions, stems and leaves, evoking a whole imagery of the herbal, a kingdom of examples. But every image is a close-up, claiming the particular, even suggesting that, what is emphasized this time bears something essential; at the same time it may imply that, what has been pointed out is as significant as what has been left out, delegated to the next picture…
The next picture may be just a different point of view, another moment in which an underlying grid has been moved, opening its frame, offering a new percept, another enactment of reality. This ruling movement – a rhythm of modification – finds a certain evidence, at least a clear articulation, in some recurrent lineament, itself exemplifying the concept of branch, interfering, perhaps interrogating the other elements constituting the space, indicating that there is something else taking place – that is, someone taking a discrete position.
The human – as we think we know more about this species – seems to make a more distinct claim, that it is more important than what is considered nature – with “considered” meaning all too often, discriminated by adoration or suppression, misunderstood through our pleasure for contemplation. Here, the human leaves its trace with a hand, an arm, a foot, also several artifacts, like an axe, a candlestick – maybe relics, or merely generic signs of civilization. The arm, by the way, lacking the flesh and being reduced to some mechanical structure, could be decayed, could as well belong to a robot.
But there is another human, the artist, and he denies any hierarchy. Noting this would be trivial, if it only reminded us of that notion, mentioned above: art’s inherent indifference towards what is just a pretext for taking its own right, the power of transformation; this transformation, though, demands meticulous differentiation. And for this exhibition Adam Saks decided to compile works from three disciplines: sculpture, which he has adopted recently; drawings, which can be seen as related studies; paintings. The sculptures may have the function of an axiom: that every piece of art is an invitation to circumnavigate what is given.
The correspondence of motifs – and, to some extent, of colours – should not distract the viewer from a more demanding coherence: that each exhibit is a marking of the same world, a fold of an embracing body, unfolding an idea. That life – or art, or love – has no reason it could take as an excuse, and no goal where it could rest? This speculation may belong to literature. Perhaps, that the eye of the beholder can be as powerful as the hand of the artist. It is the same tenderness with which one should open the eyes of the living.
— Andreas van Düren (2022)