Vee Hua 華婷婷
With his most recent body of work, Adam Friedman combines traditional landforms with some truly interplanetary shit. His mixed media pieces initially come off a little like illustrations in a scientific textbook, but closer inspection reveals worlds where land is replaced by oceans and mountains by lava-like flows. It seems that physics as we know it doesn’t really apply to Friedman’s created worlds.
But let’s sum it all up with a quote Friedman himself uses on the front page of his website; the abstract concepts in this quote absolutely explain what is going on in these works.
“Grateful for our departure? One more expression of human vanity. The finest quality of this stone, these plants and animals, the (landscape) is the indifference manifest to our presence, our absence, our coming, our staying or our going. Whether we live or die is a matter of absolutely no concern whatsoever to the (land). Let men in their madness blast every city on earth into black rubble and envelop the entire planet in a cloud of lethal gas – the canyons and hills, the springs and rocks will still be here, sunlight will filter through, water will form and warmth shall be upon the land and after sufficient time… things (will) take a different and better course.”
Edward Abbey – Desert Solitaire, 1968
Friedman currently has a solo show up at the Eleanor Harwood Gallery in San Francisco. Check it out!
Navi Esparza
