Adam Helms

War games?

Asked about his references and resources in an interview with Bob Nikas in January of last year, Adam Helms (*1974), a student of Mel Bochner, refers to a variety of sources, such as portraits from the mercenary magazine "Soldier of Fortune", collages by John Heartfield, the opening credits of the Paramount films, with the views of a mountain giant, which differed only minimally from one another over many years, as the basis of the Paramount logo, Gerhard Richter's "48 Portraits", the work for the 1972 Venice Biennale, which now hangs in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and brings together 48 black and white portraits of scientists and cultural figures since the Enlightenment, or the record covers of a noise label from Michigan with the beautiful name "Gods of Tundra". In the medium of drawing, with pencil as well as charcoal, Adam Helms draws on the observation of such sources and in turn works on portrait series, landscape paintings or poster walls on historical themes. What interests him most about the sources is the way in which the individuals want to see themselves or their subject depicted, how the "unnameable", which typology takes hold of these attempts at self-portrayal. For Adam Helms, this is the emotional entry point: by fixing the immanent pathos of the sources in his own work, he penetrates the sources and can work out the underlying obsessions. Ultimately, he emphasises, contemporary American art cannot do without propaganda, only in its quotations it refuses to acknowledge the status quo of American culture, the "spectacle of war". He is therefore all the more interested in showing the space where light and shadow meet, whether as a primordial soup or in a frontline position. This volume is the first comprehensive presentation of Adam Helms' works, in a sequence and form that has hardly changed since their inception.

Exhibitions:
Grimm Gallery Amsterdam, 28/5 - 9/7/2011
Marianne Boesky Gallery New York, 7/9 - 5/10/2014