Mac Adams
Mac Adams (* 1943 in Brynmawr, South Wales , Great Britain ) is a British conceptual artist and photographer .
Life and education
Adams studied at the Cardiff School of Art & Design from 1962 to 1967. In 1966, he married the American Barbara Whedon, who was also an art student there. Adams graduated from Rutgers University , New Jersey , USA, where he studied from 1967 to 1969 with the Fluxus artist Bob Watt. In 1969, while still a student, he took part in the first "Soft Art" exhibition at the New Jersey State Museum, where Richard Serra , Richard Artschwager , Keith Sonnier and John Chamberlain also exhibited.
In 1970 he moved to New York City. In 2009 the State University of New York named him Distinguished Teaching Professor at Old Westbury College.
Early work: "Mystery"
In 1974 his first "Mystery" series was shown in the legendary "112 Green Street Gallery" in Soho, New York City . In 1976 he began taking part in exhibitions at the John Gibson Gallery as a member of the Narrative Art movement. The "Narrative Art" group were conceptual artists who combined fictional texts with photographs. Adams went his own way in that he did not use texts, but instead used the photographs as a semiotic approach to the narrative in which the photo became a substitute for the text. The "Mystery" series had the quality of a film noir with extreme narrative compression.
In the course of his artistic activity, Adams realized that the space between the images was just as important as the image itself. He used the term "Narrative Void" (a term from film technology for the space between the individual film images), which means described the space between the images. These works were shown in various American Narrative Art exhibitions: for example from 1967 to 1977 at the Museum of Modern Art in Houston . In 1977 he was also a participant in documenta 6 in Kassel . His work has been shown in the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol , England from 1975 to 1976, in the Galleria Studio G7 in Bologna , Italy in 1978, and in the Nigel Greenwood Gallery in London , also in 1978, among others . These early photographic works had a huge impact on an entire generation of artists.
Parallel to his photographic "mystery" works, he sometimes also staged large room installations in which he depicted fictitious crimes. The audience was then asked to reconstruct the story through interpretation and forensic analysis.
"Shadow Works" and outdoor work
In 1984 Mac Adams began working with shadows. Figurative shadows were projected from very abstract structures that were only visible under certain lighting conditions. He created numerous large shadow sculptures that worked with sunlight outdoors.
Adams created more than a dozen large outdoor sculptures, such as the "Korean War Memorial" at Battery Park in New York City in 1991 as the first major monument to the Korean War in the United States.
Works in collections
Mac Adam's work is part of collections in more than 35 public museums worldwide. These include the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Center Pompidou in Paris , the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art and the Musée d'Art Moderne in Luxembourg.
Awards
- 2002: New York State University Chancellors Research Award for Excellence in Arts and Humanities
- 1988: New York State Fellowship for the Arts (sculpture)
- 1982: National Endowment Fellowship for the Arts (sculpture)
- 1981: Berlin , German Academic Exchange Service , Berlin artist program
- 1980: National Endowment Fellowship for the Arts
- 1977: National Endowment Fellowship for the Arts
literature
- Catalog for documenta 6: Volume 1: Painting, sculpture / environment, performance; Volume 2: photography, film, video; Volume 3: Hand drawings, utopian design, books; Kassel 1977 ISBN 3-920453-00-X
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Adams, Mac |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British photographer, artist and sculptor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1943 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Brynmawr, South Wales |