Marina Adams’s debut institutional solo exhibition in Asia will feature eleven large-scale acrylic and watercolour paintings and four scroll intaglio monoprints on paper inspired by Chinese folded books

Marina Adams earned degrees from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA and Columbia University, New York. She is the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (2016) and the Award of Merit Medal for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2018). Adams has participated in various solo and group exhibitions, including the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York (2021), Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth (2020), Camden Arts Centre, London (2016), and CUE Art Foundation, New York (2008). Marina Adams’ work is in the collections of the MoMA, New York, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Longlati Foundation, Shanghai. She lives and works in New York, Bridgehampton, Long Island, and Parma, Italy.

Poetry is a crucial component of Adams’s artistic practice, intertwining language and painting, opening a pathway through its ineffable sensory experience. “In the Garden of My Memory” is derived from Ted Berrigan’s poem Tambourine Life. Perhaps this phrase struck Adams in her studio on a summer afternoon and leapt off the page. Here, it functions as a cryptic invitation, inviting viewers to journey through the artist’s vibrant realm of memories constructed through colours. Like poetry, Adams’s artworks don’t provide specific imagery or narratives, yet they vividly convey her perspectives and contemplation of the world. Impressions drawn from nature, music, fabrics, architecture, and literature are transformed into dynamic colours, humming with the physical resonance of individual existence through the canvas as if its structure were a kind of grammar, and light and shadow serve as its tones. These pieces traverse the boundaries of diverse logical fields, directly reaching the channels of individual senses.

Adams’s creations should be understood as abstract expressionism within the realm of colour field painting. On the one hand, she follows the tradition of colour field painting, emphasising the ontological superiority of overall form and colour in the painting, thereby discarding the once-prominent symbols and rhetoric. On the other hand, distinct from the typical serenity and meticulousness of colour field paintings, she consistently infuses her colours with spiritual energy, imbuing her paintings with vitality. They undoubtedly emanate from the artist’s bodily rhythm, interpreted into live abstractions through brushes and pigments.