Imagine if the time-based unfurlings of growth and decay, instead of gradually evolving to be so, happened all at once. This flood of flat excess is the principle behind Lisa Adams' surreal landscapes. They capture her version of paradise by seeing everything-- the beautiful and not-beautiful, the before, the after and the now-- all at once. Lisa Adams conjures this great jumble in her exhibition 'Paradise Notwithstanding.'
Lisa Adams Paradise Notwithstanding, 2011 Oil on panel 48" x 60"
Adams calls her pieces of paradise "a full display of life on life’s terms." Her pieces explore the interconnectedness of art and nature in a very rare fashion; they both read like indifferent and inhuman forces, governed by time. Adams frees both art and nature from their timelines, letting them operate on their own terms. Different moments of art history--abstraction, classical representation, graffiti-- roam amongst each other unorthodoxly. Images from nature undergo a similar ritual; they seem to be growing and rotting all at once. Every point of growth and decay is treated equally on the picture plane, welcomed into Adams' overflowing pile of stuff happening all at once.
The result is dizzying and surreal. The power to see all is both a paradise and a nightmare; Adams tends to show so nicely how opposities can become each other over time.
'Paradise Notwithstanding' will show at CB1 Gallery until January 15, 2012.
