ADAM FERNANDO PORTAFOLIO 2021

F E R N A N D O A DAM |

ARTWORK

CONTACT

Passatge de Sant Benet 4, Bajos 1º 08003, Barcelona | SPAIN M +34 605 879 111 T +34 932 313 355 adamfernando.web@gmail.com www.fernando-adam.com @adamfernando_art

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ADAM | BIO

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«Close your eyes, prick your ears, and from the softest sound to the wildest noise, from the simplest tone to the highest harmony, from the most violent, passionate scream to the gentlest words of sweet reason, it is by Nature who speaks, revealing her being, her power, her life, […] » —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

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T h e wo r k o f Fer n an d o Ad am begins with his studies of art and design at the Instituto Neumann in Caracas, under the guidance of recognized Venezuelan and European creators. His artistic discipline develops in the design workshops inspired by the Bauhaus principles in the integration of art and industry. Such a stimulating environment, which involves experimenting with modern and contemporary languages, techniques, and materials, awakes his passion for manual and construction work. Following this training, he dedicates his early career to the craft of carpentry and of industrial design from his atelier Adam Mix-Media at El Hatillo.

Middle left: Punta Arena bench, 1997.

Bottom left: Macanao chair, 1995.

Bottom right: Capure chair, 1992.

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During this same period, Adam investigates with the use of industrial paint as a means of expression in the creation of his objects-limit. Sculpture-furniture-objects built in wood and later intervened pictorially, by condensing atmospheres, textures, patinas, and figures in a time and a space where the artist, the designer, and the craftsman are integrated.

At the end of the 90s Adam closes his cabinetmaking and moves to Barcelona to dedicate himself to a full-time painting project.

The beginning of this period marks a substantial change in his work. The object as a base and three-dimensional medium becomes the ground for a dialectic relationship with the two-dimensional pictorial space. His initial research reflects an intimate process of technical and thematic depuration, in which the space becomes an abstract atmosphere to envelop a weightless object of strong iconographic load.

Objects-limit series: Marmolino drawer, 1993.

Iconos series: Ingravity, 2001.

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Adam’s artistic exploration evolves into a more figurative approach, where the house —as an essential container of subjectivity— becomes the place for examining notions of rooting, temporality, and displacement. His in-depth knowledge of carpentry comes into play once again in the shape of chairs, beams, tables, stairways, and windows. On the canvas, they become stable elements of an emptied domestic space, of illusory perspectives, from where to contemplate the world and existence.

Top: Settlement, 2007.

Middle left: Records of Silence I, 2007.

Middle right: Records of Silence V, 2005.

Bottom left: Blue Wait, 2012.

Bottom right: First Harvests, 2007.

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Top left: Emotional Landscape I, 2003.

Top right: Fernando Adam, 1964.

Bottom right: Departure and arrival, 2011.

Seas, trees, horizons, and landscapes are drawn by Adam in a variety of contextual planes describing, like vital maps, the trajectories of this navigator with Caribbean and Germanic roots. As such, and despite of finding inspiration in modern and contemporary artists such as Morandi, Hammershoi, Balthus or Hooper, rather than adhering to a particular trend his artwork responds to a very personal synthesis and drive. A naturalist vision inherited from his German father and the sensible images captured by him with his Leica camera.

In his more recent work, Adam relies once more on his construction and composition skills.

Conversely, it is the surface of the canvas that fragments, alternating between two and three dimensions. Without modifying the compositional values of light, weight and balance found in his pictorial technique, in the assembly of parts is the relationship with time the one that appears to be changed. In the tension created between representation and materiality, between figure and background, his desire for registering a photographic instant is expressed in the building of a present made from the splitting of time.

« Being here on earth: no further than a tree, no more unexplainable, lithe in autumn, bloated in summer, with what we are or are not, with the shadow, the memory, the desire, till the end (if there is an end) voice to voice, house after house […] » —Eugenio Montejo, Terredad., 2008.

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Top: Travesías paralelas / Parallel Paths, 2009.

Bottom left: Comenzar de nuevo/ Starting Again, 2011.

Bottom right: Cuando tú te vas / When you Leave, 2011.

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Top: La contemplación / The contemplation, 2010.

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Top right: La Espera / The Wait, 2012.

Bottom left: Palm Beach Fair Exhibition, 201

But the house as a rootless object is also depicted in his work as an inner, architectural space framing the landscape and gaze in a constant dialogue between interior and exterior, solid and fragile, nature and built environment, absence and presence. A playful figuration that tells us about his way of seeing and being in the world. From his origins, from the sensitive memory of those objects and those imagined, built, and inhabited spaces.

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Uninhabited Series: Luna llena / Full Moon, 2021.

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Top: Fernando’s work collage.

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Driftwood Series: Torre / Tour, 2015.

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A D A M | RECENT WORK

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Nature everywhere speaks to man in a voice. »

—Alexander von Humboldt.

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DRIFTWOOD |

Most driftwood is the remains of trees —in whole or in parts — providing natural shelter for birds, fish, and other species in shorelines. There is also a subset of driftwood known as drift lumber which includes the remains of man-made wooden objects. I am interested in both senses of the term. In that related with its condition of wood transformed by water erosion, used as a natural habitat, and that other associated with recycling wood-waste coming from changes in the human physical environment.

Top left: Deshabitada II / Uninhabited II. Photography, 2021.

Bottom: La vecindad/ Neighborhood, 2016.

With an archaeologist’s spirit I frequently find myself searching for discarded woods that have been used for building boats, houses, and furniture. Beams, boards, doors, or windows left as vestiges of other lives and living spaces. Once the pieces are in my studio, I analyze them carefully. I let them talk and tell me their stories. I try to recognize the places where memory manifests, to later translate them into my own artistic research in a close dialogue with nature.

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I start from what is particular: an incision, a knot, a crack, a spot, or remains of weathered paint. Those are the first footprints I look in the wood as an archival.

From there, I build an elementary base structure that allows me to explore new forms and relationships in the assembly of the parts, to later intervene them pictorially.

I constantly recall in my work to the archetypal image of the house, or the primitive hut as symbolic models. I am most interested in its representational character of maximum external synthesis, as much as for its essence of interior space where human existence develops.

In times when the world faces the largest displacement crisis since WWII, with several humanitarian, social and environmental emergencies, going back to life’s essence, in a sensitive, resilient, and respectful manner, is my small contribution to a more sustainable future, and my way of facing my own experience of loss and translation.

«Moving by sea or through time, on a ship, on a cart with books, changing houses, words, landscapes, always separating so that someone stays and someday some else leaves. » —Eugenio Montejo, Mudanzas / Moving, 2008.

Top left: Desplazados/ Displaced, 2018.

Bottom: Finalist Sculpture Award Exhibition. Fundación Vilacasa, Museu Can Mario, Spain.

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Top left: Untitled 04, 2019.

Middle right: Untitled 05, 2019.

Bottom left: Untitled 06, 2019.

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In this way, each new object is treated in all its uniqueness. In the projection of their identity, each house echoes its own body, its own being. Its material corporeality is grounded in a process of hybridization where new memories and landscapes are tied, adhered, and juxtaposed.

In their ability to encapsule life experiences, the house is an organism with an endless capacity for mutation and accumulation. A poetic of living that allows me to reflect on plurality, instability, and fragility in the construction, today, of individual and collective space.

Top right: Mapire, 2019.

Middle left: Amazone, 2019.

Bottom right: Family Reunion, 2015.

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Left: Camino a casa / Way home, 2019.

Middle: Faro Norte/ North lighthouse, 2019.

Right: Casa-madre / Motherhouse, 2015.

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Top: Fernando’s work collage.

Bottom: Theresa chaise-long. 2017.

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I N L A N D | EXHIBITION PROJECT

I nland approaches the multiple stages of a journey. It is a point of departure, a destination, and a drift. Inland explores a territory of ambiguities in which all different levels of movement are intertwined, trespassed, both hospitable and hosted, mutually affected by each other. There is no longer a subject and an object, a figure, and a landscape. Everything becomes trespassed and is part of a whole. The journey this exhibition proposes is a path towards intimacy —to where intimacy becomes a subversive act—.

To develop an articulated body of work is not an easy task in the fragmentary, unfocused, and contradictory times that we are living in.

The tempo for thought is in a minefield, and the overload of stimuli leaves no alternatives other than an act of dismantlement. A minimum route of honesty as a pathway that outreaches the very possibility of a map.

Top: Beyond Wyeth I (Study of “Cristina’s World”), 2019.

Middle: I’ll Make you a Little House, 2019.

Bottom: Beyond Wyeth III (Study of “Cristina’s World”), 2019.

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Top: Beyond Hopper, 2020. (Study of “Room with Sun”, by E. Hooper, during lockdown).

Inland is placed in such a path as an open house, as an invitation to be passed through, inhabited in a time of silence, pandemic, and introspection. Architecture, landscapes, and emotional portraits converge and dialogue in intimacy. In the intimacy of this dialogue, a fragile, affective bond is built.

And that simple act reveals itself as an authentic and profound immersion.

Bottom right: Emotional Forecast, 2021.

Bottom left: Delta rojo / Red Delta, 2021.

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Planetary Disorder Series: Room with Lemons, 2021.

Bottom left: Work in progress.

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Top: Paisaje compartido / Shared Landscape, 2021.

Bottom: Paisaje habitado / Inhabited Landscape. 2020.

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TEMPORARY ROOM |

RESEARCH PROJECT

«The house we were born in is more than an embodiment of home, it is also an embodiment of dreams.

Each one of its nooks and corners were a resting place for daydreaming. » —Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space.

I was born on a January 1st after a car crash, which entailed an abrupt departure from my first home. Such an early arrival into the world determined my way of being and of inhabiting spaces.

So did the house in which I grew up alongside my seven siblings in Caracas. It was a hybrid space where the constructive elements of my father’s Germanic tradition singularly combined with my mother’s Venezuelan-criolla heritage. Our family life revolved around an enclosed and inwardlooking patio. From there, contact with outer world reduced to the sky framed by the four eaves of the roof. The rooms followed each other along the corridor, and their occupation had to rearrange with the arrival of each new son or daughter. The only to remain permanent was my parents’ room.

But the house that nurtures my creative practice is the one built in El Hatillo, Caracas, together with Carola, architect, and partner. In such a four-hand project, the sense of permanence addresses the design and building of every space, beam, door and framing of the views. The circumstances traced a different destination. A temporary relocation to Barcelona became indefinite in the uncertain and unstable times we are living in. The house remained unfinished and, despite the many attempts to return, we hardly inhabit it.

My artistic work, in its different media and formats, seeks to transcend the feelings of detachment and loss entailed in exile.

TEMPORARY ROOM is an exercise of transient occupation –from an intimate and personal perspective– to inquire new modes of global and contemporary inhabitation. A proposal that is transformed and re-signified as it occupies new spaces, from a close dialogue between art and architecture.

Following experiences in vacated flats in BARCELONA (Feb 2018) and MADRID (Oct 2019), the project finds his way to ZÜRICH in November 2019. In collaboration with Swiss architect Sandy Brunner, we occupied an empty space, just before renovation, at a street corner of the city center.

TEMPORARY ROOM invites to reflect on human experience faced, today, to a constant change and mobility. It interrogates, at the same time, on the validity of the established practices in the exhibition and circulation of contemporary art in current times.

Top left: Sotavento house. Caracas, 2008.

Middle right: In Construction I, 2021.

Bottom left: In Construction II, 2021.

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BARCELONA

La próxima cosecha / The Next Harvest, 2017.

OPEN HO USE : Les Glories , Feb 2018.

Adam Art & Sandy Brunner Architecture in d ialogue.

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«Housed everywhere but nowhere shut in, this is the motto of the dreamer of dwellings. A daydream of elsewhere should be left open therefore, at all times. »

—Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space.

In situ performance by Matias Adam, March 2018.

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MADRID

The House I Inhabit Series: Comunidad / Community, 2019.

HABITACI ÒN TEMPORAL: 9 0 M2 Malas aña, O c t 2019.

A R TW O RK : Fe r nan do A dam.

C U R A TOR : C ar ola B ar r ios .

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«A house constitutes a body of images that give mankind proofs or illusions of stability.

We are constantly re-imagining its reality: to distinguish all these images would be to describe the soul of the house; it would mean developing a veritable psychology of the house. » —Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space.

Participative action: How do you inhabit?

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ZÜRICH

Desorden planetario I, II / Planetary Disorder I, II 2017.

TEMPORARY ROOM : 76 M2 Mor gar t e nst r ass e , N ov 2019.

A R TW O RK : Fe r nan do A dam.

C U R A TOR : C ar ola B ar r ios .

O R G A N IZED and C O- C UR A TED by S and y B r unne r A r c hite c t ur e .

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« Building is, in fact, dwelling, and with dwelling being the manner in which human beings exist on earth, building as dwelling is something which nurtures things, natural or man-made. » —Martin Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking.

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THE HOUSE I INHABIT |

PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE

Without inhabiting there is no place...

Inspired by Heidegger, this premise guides the development of my work in the last two decades. With the use of different media, I perform the act of occupation wherever I go. I do this exercise in a playful way; at some point obsessively, looking for feelings of bond and identity with the hosting places. The first thing I do is to look carefully at the site. I seek for signs that allow me to get in tune with the particularity of its natural elements. Using aesthetics as a vehicle of communication, I select a set for placing the outlined wooden house that I bring with me. Then, I start to compose possible scenarios to inhabit, followed by a photograph action to register the emotional fictions. An archival of images that is produced with the gaze of the traveler, and the urgency of someone who is looking for belonging and roots.

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PHOTOGRAPHIC NOTES

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ADAM |

EXHIBITIONS

2019-20

2014

Group show: Cuerpos confinados. Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del Zulia (Pandemic online exhibition) Independent Project: Temporary Room: 76 M2, Adam Art; Carola Barrios, curator; Sandy Brunner Architecture, organizer and co-curator. Zürich, Switzerland.

Independent Project: Habitación temporal: 90M2. Adam Art & Carola Barrios, curator. Madrid, Spain.

Open House Art Festival, Encounters 2019. Brighton.

Solo show: Terra Endins, Galería Jordi Barnadas, Barcelona, Spain.

AFF NewYork/Brusels/Singapore/HongKong Villa del Arte Galleries.

ACRA Art fair Hong Kong Barnadas &Huang Gallery. Hong Kong, China.

Solo show: "So quiet", Barnadas & Huang Gallery. Hong Kong, China.

Solo show: El Estado de las Cosas. OneArt Space, Art Toronto, Mark Hachem Gallery, Canada.

SOFA Chicago, Mark Hachem Gallery, Chicago USA AFF Singapore, Barnadas & Huang Gallery.

Singapore.

AFF Hong Kong, Galería Barnadas &Huang, China.

2018

2013

Exhibition: Premi Escultura. Fundación Vilacasa, Museu Can Mario. Palafrugel, Spain.

Group Show: Galeria Jordi Barnadas, Barcelona, Spain.

Aqua Art Fair Miami, Irreversible Project, USA. Group Show: Solo Escultura, Galleria Forni, Bologna, Italy.

Open House Art Festival, Encounters 2018. Brighton.

Independent Project: Adam Art & Sandy Brunner Architecture. Barcelona, Spain.

Contemporary Art Fair, Galleria Forni, Strasburg.

Scope Basel Fair Mark Hachem Gallerie, Basel.

Group show: Mark Hachem Gallerie, Lebanon, Beirut.

Group Show: Katapult Gallerie. Basel, Switzerland.

Group show: Villa del Arte Galleries. Barcelona, AAF Brussels, Villa del Arte Galleries, Belgium.

India Art Fair, Villa del Arte Galleries, New Delhi, India.

Singapore Worlds Apart, Villa del Arte Galleries New Art Fair, Villa del Arte Galleries. Paris, France.

LA Art Show, Villa del Arte Galleries, USA. 2012

Art Karlsruhe, Villa del Arte Galleries, Germany.

AAF New York, Villa del Arte Galleries, USA. San Francisco Art Fair, Villa del Arte Galleries, USA. Art Hamptons, Villa del Arte Galleries, New York USA. Houston Fine Art Fair, Villa del Arte Galleries, USA.

Group show: Silencio. Villa del Arte Galleries, Barcelona, Spain.

LA Art Show, Villa del Arte Galleries, USA. Art Karlsruhe, Villa del Arte Galleries, Germany.

San Francisco Art Fair, Villa del Arte Galleries Art Beirut, Villa del Arte Galleries, Beirut, Lebanon.

Houston Fine Art Fair, Villa del Arte Galleries Art Miami, Villa del Arte Galleries, USA. Contemporary Istanbul, Villa del Arte Galleries Art Helsinki, Galleria Forni, Finland.

Solo Show: Galeria Jordi Barnadas, Barcelona, Spain.

2016

2011

San Francisco Art Fair, Villa del Arte Galleries, USA. Art Hamptons, Villa del Arte Galleries, New York.

Art Beirut, Villa del Arte Galleries. Beirut, Lebanon.

Houston Fine Art Fair, Villa del Arte Galleries, USA. Two Artists Show: Galleria Forni, Bologna, Italy.

Art Karlsruhe, Galería Anquins, Karlsruhe, Germany.

Art Fiera Bologna Off, Gallería Forni, Bologna, Italy.

Group show: Villa del Arte Galleries, Barcelona, Spain.

AAF New York, Villa del Arte Galleries. New York, USA. LA Art Show, Villa del Arte Galleries, Los Angeles, USA. Art Palm Beach, Mark Hachem Gallery, USA. Art Madrid, Galeria Jordi Barnadas, Spain.

Art Chicago, Mark Hachem Gallery, USA Solo show: Inside Out, Mark Hachem Gallery, Paris.

Art London, Mark Hachem Gallery, UK. Contemporary Istanbul, Mark Hachem Gallery, Turkey.

2017

2015 ST-ART, Galleria Forni, Strasbourg, France.

Art Verona, Galleria Forni, Verona, Italy.

Two Artists Show: Sur-Real, Barnadas & Huang Gallery. Singapore.

South Hamptons Art Fair, Villa del Arte Galleries, USA. AAF Singapore, Barnadas &Huang Gallery, China.

AAF London/ New York, Villa del Arte Galleries, UK.

2010 Group show: Villa del Arte Galleries. Barcelona.

LA Art Show, Villa del Arte Galleries, USA. MiArt, Galería Jordi Barnadas. Milan, Italy.

Group show: Pixel, Galería GBG. Caracas, Venezuela.

AAF New York, Villa del Arte Galleries. New York, USA. Art Miami, Mark Hachem Gallery. Miami, USA.

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2009

2004-2003

Group show: Villa del Arte Galleries. Barcelona,.

Solo show: Asentamiento, Galería 39. Caracas, Venezuela.

Glasgow Art Fair, Villa del Arte Galleries, Scotland.

St-Art, Galería Jordi Barnadas. Strasbourg, France.

FIA, Feria Iberoamericana, Galería 39. Caracas, Venezuela.

Red Dot Art Fair, Villa del Arte Gallerie. Miami, USA.

Group show: Villa del Arte Galleries. Barcelona, Spain.

Art Paris, Galería Minotauro. Paris, France.

Group show: Galería Jorge Alcolea. Madrid, Spain.

2002 Art Miami, Galería Minotauro. Miami, USA. FIA, Feria Iberoamericana de Arte, Galería Minotauro.

Caracas, Venezuela.

Solo show: Registros de viaje, Galería Minotauro.

Caracas, Venezuela.

2008 Group show: Villa del Arte Galleries. Barcelona, Spain.

Art Palm Beach, Mark Hachem Gallery, USA. Solo show: Anada i Tornada, Galería Jordi Barnadas.

Barcelona, Spain.

MiArt, Galería Jordi Barnadas, Milan, Italy.

FIA, Galería Minotauro. Caracas, Venezuela.

Group show: Spazio Forni. Ragusa, Italy.

Arte Padova, Galería Jordi Barnadas. Italy.

2000-2001 Solo show: Paisajes Emocionales, Galería Portdoguer.

Cadaqués, Spain.

Group show: Galería Jorge Albero, Madrid, Spain.

FIA, Galería Minotauro. Caracas, Venezuela.

Solo show: Obra Reciente, Galería American Prints.

Barcelona, Spain.

2007 Group show: Villa del Arte Galleries, Barcelona Art Miami, Mark Hachem Gallery, USA. Art Palm Beach, Mark Hachem Gallery, USA International Art+Design Fair, Mark Hachem Gallery New York, USA. Art Moscow, Mark Hachem Gallery. Moscow, Russia.

MiArt, Galería Jordi Barnadas. Milan, Italy.

Solo show: Diálogos en dos idiomas, Galería Minotauro. Caracas, Venezuela.

1994-1998 FIA, Feria Iberoamericana de Arte, Galería Minotauro.

Caracas, Venezuela.

1991-1993 Art Miami. Galería Minotauro, USA. Solo show: De la serie visiones-instalación 3, Galería Minotauro. Caracas, Venezuela.

2006

SALO N S AN D G R AN TS

Group show: Villa del Arte Galleries. Barcelona, Spain.

Art Miami, Mark Hachem Gallery, USA. Solo show: Diàlegs, monòlegs i silencis, Galería Jordi Barnadas. Barcelona, Spain.

Art Paris, Galería Minotauro. París, France.

Internatinal Art+Design Fair, Mark Hachem Gallery. New York, USA. MiArt, Galería Jordi Barnadas, Milan, Italy.

Beijing Art Fair, Mark Hachem Gallery. Beijing, China.

Art Chicago, Mark Hachem Gallery. Chicago, USA. Group show: Vistas y visions, Studio Forni, Milan, Italy.

Art Verona, Studio Forni. Verone, Italy.

St-Art Fair, Galería Jordi Barnadas, Strasbourg, France.

Art Toronto, Mark Hachem Gallery. Toronto, Canada.

Art Shangai, Mark Hachem Gallery. Shangai, China.

2018 Finalist Sculture Award: Premi Escultura Fundación Vilacasa, Museu Can Mario, Palafrugel, Spain.

2007 Finalist 58th Salón Michetti, Nuovo Realismo, Fondazione Michetti. Chieti, Italy.

2002 1st prize Mercedes Benz. Barcelona, Spain.

1989 Salón Aragua, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo.

Maracay, Venezuela.

2005

1988

Group show: Villa del Arte Galleries. Barcelona, Spain.

Group show: Galería Minotauro, Paris, France.

MiArt, Galería Jordi Barnadas, Milan, Italy Art London, Mark Hachem Gallery. UK. International Art+Design Fair, Mark Hachem Gallery.

New York, USA. ST Art Fair, Galería Jordi Barnadas. Strasbourg, France.

Salón Nacional de Arte, Bienal de Dibujo, Museo Alejandro Otero. Caracas, Venezuela.

The work of Fernando Adam is represented at private collections in Latin America, Europe, North America, and Asia.

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ADAM |

C R E D I T S

EL ALMACÉN ART & DESIGN STUDIO

ARTWORK Fe rn an do Ad am

TEXTS AND MONTAGE DESIGN C ar ola B arrio s Architect, Curator and Architectural Historian.

Barcelona, 2021.

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Fernando Adam at El Almacén Studio in Barcelona.

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