Dennis Hollingsworth

Studio Visit: Adam Janes

I dropped into Adam's Frogtown studio last night to say hello. He's moving to another one in Alta Dena and I wanted to see what he had going on before me makes his move.

He's working for Richard jackson, an artist who has tremendous momentum in Europe, but not well enough known here stateside. Adam flagged the video taken of Jackson as he was musing about the artworld, while cleaning the harvest from a recent hunting excursion. I'd like to meet Jackson someday.

Adam works in ways that I can relate to. He organizes his work into projects where all drawings and objects serve a kind of "client" (see the titles on this page), an imaginative objective or subject for which all his actions serve. His formalism is garrulous, composed of many elements in a language or typology where each piece interlocks with another in a specific way. He defers a final resolution (a phantasmogoric abstraction perhaps) so that the objective nature of his imagery never finds rest or comfort in a singular visage. Contrarily and without contradiction, he uses the conventions of painting/sculpture as models to navigate by: portrait, landscape, still life, etc. He beleives in chops, drawing, he's a monster for drawing in all its variants.

I asked him to talk about his "Johnny Jump Up Relaxus Pantium Protectus":

Adam used to work for Paul McCarthy ("Papa Smurf", his people call him... I think of how Joseph Bueys was called the "River G-d") and now Richard Jackson. Both artists have become natural exemplars for Adam, inspiring him to think in similar ways (in terms of his sense of humor, imaginative process and approach to practice, a fond appreciation for innocent childlike wonder). Conversations with Adam feels like his work: full of suprising turns, humorous asides, cartwheeling associations, ocassional erasures and backtracking, knee slapping guffaws...