This immersive ceramics exhibition by contemporary artist Christopher Adams comes on the heels of a major installation at Harvard University this past spring.

New York, NY (CHELSEA) Garvey|Simon is pleased to announce Christopher Adams: Primordial Garden, an installation of new, wall-mounted ceramic sculptures. This exhibition reveals the artist’s brilliant glazing techniques, filling the gallery with plant-like biomorphic abstractions of all sizes, reflecting Adams’s scientific background in biology, zoology and medicine.

The Opening Reception will take place on October 8, 6-8pm. The artist will be present. RSVP to Henry Jones at henry@garveysimon.com. (Members of the Press welcome without reservation.) The exhibition will run through Saturday, November 7, 2015. 

ABOUT THE SHOW

Christopher Adams creates sculptures that play on biological concepts, specifically adaptive radiation, whereby a pioneering organism enters an untapped environment and then differentiates rapidly without departing too much from its original form. His sculptures suggest varieties of creatures, but not necessarily a specific organism.  Many works in the exhibition, Primordial Garden, are suggestive of plant life with leafy tendrils and frayed edges. The installation implies a Darwinian evolution, with the creatures fewer in number and larger in form than in his previous shows, the largest approaching 3 feet in length. 

Christopher Adams merges his deep understanding of biology and ceramic surface to create a variety of ever-evolving finishes on his sculptures. A sense of play is ever apparent in the work (what the artist calls “promiscuous glazing”) as he manipulates the colors and textures of his ceramic organisms.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Christopher Wade Adams began experimenting with ceramics in high school. He has developed a richly varied series of abstracted biomorphic forms. Each series grows out of an evolutionary process parallel to the science that informs his work. By continually recombining forms and experimenting with glazing beyond traditional ceramics practices, Adams has created a remarkable body of work that breathes new life into an ancient medium. Creeping tendrils, twisted leaves, cartilaginous growths, and knotted rock shapes inhabit the walls with a beautifully primordial presence.

Adams made his public debut at the Scope New York art fair in March 2006 to rave reviews and a sold-out booth. In reviewing the fair, Ken Johnson of The New York Times described Christopher’s sculptures as “wonderfully delicate, spiky objects that look like specimens of underwater flora and fauna from another planet.”

The artist’s recent exhibition at Harvard University, Life or Something Like It, included 1,000 works. The artist’s Summer 2013 exhibition at Greenwich House Pottery (where he did a 10 month residency) also included a vast amount of work, installed floor to ceiling along a 25’ wall.

Christopher Adams was born in Medford, MA. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College where he majored in organismic and evolutionary biology. In 2004 he graduated from Columbia University of Physicians and Surgeons. His dermatology practice is located in Boston.

This is Christopher Adams’ fifth solo show in New York and his first with Garvey Simon Art Access.