Adam Strange

Artist Statement

Adam's artwork explores the zozobra in a suture zone, through the medium of digital painting and photomontage. Collage is a means to express the workings of the unconscious mind or as a political or social act of protest. Collage makes clear the disparate parts of images used, that when coupled together, a new reality previously unknown arises. Montage is the painting, suturing and layering of multiple parts to create a single unified image, thereby emphasizing the final image’s “reality” rather than the procedures and materials of its creation. Photos from a variety of sources, including the artist's, brings realism, clarity and relevance to contemporary themes of corruption, war crimes, disease and greed. Images appear as "real" as the photographic material they are based on, but now embody a reality of their own. By turns, demanding, fearful, and disorienting. They are apt representations of the times we live in.

Artists re-contextualize their cultural experience into new forms and realities. Even though the artistic methods may be historically similar, the meaning and content are relevant to the times in which they live. For Adam, light and shadow become the primary language of communication. Light struggles to define unknown spaces while shadows sit lugubriously in the atmosphere. Dense light illuminates the journeys we take from the purely aesthetic to the sacramental to the political, then reconstruct into stark forms and landscapes, resulting in nuanced, disturbing and sensual images. Shadows visually define the composition, form and space, but unknowingly, it may not be the light we see - only the shadows have substance. Adam's images reflect our anxious world showing the “essentia” - the world as it really is.