VIDEO: Adam Fuss at Cheim & Read | ADAA, The Art Show

Adam Fuss finds love on paper

Photograms have been around for more than a hundred years. Man Ray famously created his rayographs as he experimented with paper and light at the turn of the 20th century when, during the birth of the surrealist movement, artists began to expand the boundaries of fine art. They invented new approaches to familiar media, new ways of manipulating traditional materials and new ways of using technology. Artists like Pablo Picasso, László Moholy-Nagy, Christian Schad (who called them “Schadographs”), Imogen Cunningham and others experimented with this cameraless photography technique that involves placing objects directly onto light sensitive surfaces (like photographic paper) and then exposing the paper to light. Photography, in all its iterations, was in the process of being reclassified as a fine art medium.

Thomas Ruff at David Zwirner Gallery

New York City-based artist Adam Fuss, represented at the ADAA’s The Art Show by Cheim & Read talked about his captivating abstractions and the inspiration behind his work. In this interview we learned more about his own process creating photograms, his emotional inspirations and the role of love and longing in his gestural compositions.

Video interview transcript:

Adam Fuss - Cheim & Read

Adam Fuss: “Photogram” is a catchall phrase that describes photographic works that are made without a camera. In this case, I laid objects directly on the photographic paper, and exposed the paper and the objects to light.

This white area is the reaction of the photographic paper to light, and, this area did not receive any light. These are intestines laid on the photographic paper that have had a chemical reaction. Layers of photo sensitive dyes on the paper to produce this set of colors.

Alison Rossiter at Stephen Bulger Gallery 

Adam Fuss 'Love' series Cheim & Read

These pictures come out of a work called Love, which is a picture of two rabbits with their intestines mixed together. I think, by that I was trying to express multiple different thoughts and feelings. One of them was the idea of having figurative art and abstract art mixed together in the same picture. An effort for there to be a meaning and a sense of figuration and abstraction, together at the same time.

This interview © galleryIntell. Artwork © Adam Fuss, and courtesy of the artist and Cheim & Read, New York.