The Long, Loud Silence

Solo exhibition by Adam Lupton

August 26 – September 23, 2022

part of the program of ORTSTERMIN 22 – Art Festival in Moabit and the Hansaviertel

 

Scope BLN, Lübecker Straße 43, 10559 Berlin

 

Adam Lupton is artist in residence at Scope BLN. His solo exhibition entitled "The Long, Loud Silence" is based on large-format paintings and a stop-motion painting video that Lupton has been working on in recent months.

The paintings in the gallery space reflect an outward silence of an interior dialogue. The stillness of the paintings reflect back to the viewer how deafening anxiety can be – when it sweeps you inside your head and the volume on the rest of the world scales down.

The endless loop of the stop-motion video, the repetition of patterns in the paintings and, the tiling of the paintings that were made into the stop-motion video all create a rhythm and cadence within the space, like parts of a musical piece that is incomplete and dim.

The gallery space of Scope BLN is an almost perfect white cube with a large window facing the street. This "usual" exhibition environment is filled with paintings with unusual, often ambiguous meanings. They impress with their artistic qualities, and the plots make the viewer ask questions about the conscious, the subconscious, the historical codes embedded in our consciousness, our fears and expectations of the present.

The paradox contained in the title "The Long, Loud Silence” also leads to perceptions that do not lead to any everyday clarity – similar to the confused sound environment, the concepts, ideas, political and social developments of our present. 

 

About the artist:

Adam Lupton (1987, Vancouver, Canada) currently lives and works in Berlin. His work grows out of his OCD, where his every day is filled with performing mental and physical rituals (checking multiple times to see if the door is locked), endlessly seeking assurance (constantly Googling to see if his emotions are “correct”), and repeating mantras and projections (what if this happens in the future, then what? then what? then what?) – thoughts that mediate between him and the exterior world.

Using variations or alternative versions of himself to express in some familiar-but-off landscape the unfolding emotions and actions of his OCD, Lupton works with non-traditional methods of paint application: using stamps, printmaking, and craft applications to express the varied, repetitive, and frantic emotions of intrusive thoughts. These applications mediate between him and the painting, much like OCD mediates between him and his world.

Through this lens, the work weaves together individual and societal rituals, spiritual tension, and self-defining myth, thereby illuminating the various attempts at and desires for clarity. These overlaps create narratives that play out on the canvas – borrowing their basis from Greek myths, religious rituals, rock lyrics, modern dating plights, domestic routines, history, introspection, sexuality, and compulsions – as Lupton casts a contemporary world of anxiety though questions of identity, masculinity, ego, modern-day loneliness, domesticity, and mental health.

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www.alupton.com 

 

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.