Journal 2
Adam Henry

Henry’s interest in perception has become charged in recent years. His newest works have expanded his vocabulary of abstraction to include images of lightbulbs, flashlights, and cosmic themes–representations that operate reciprocally as images and symbols. Painted in a period of “post-truth” politics, these paintings probe the space between clarity and obfuscation that resonates with the day-to-day experience of our uncertain times.

Adam Henry (b. Pueblo, Colorado) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He holds a BFA in Art and Art History from the University of New Mexico and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. Recent exhibitions include solo exhibitions at River Valley Arts Collective, Hudson, NY; The Ice House, Garrison, NY; Meessen De Clercq, Brussels, Belgium; 247365, New York; and the University of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie; and group shows at SALTS, Birsfelden, Switzerland; Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York; Rita Urso, Milan, Italy; Dia Horia, Mykonos, Greece; and Bill Brady, Miami, FL. A monograph on his work from 2011–16 was published by Meessen De Clercq.

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Image credits: Untitled (Atmosphere), 2021, Acrylic on linen, 41 x 34 inches. Photo by Charles Benton (banner and above).

Chris Wiley on Untitled (AXs4h), 2017

While I sleep, Adam Henry’s otherworldly Untitled (AXs4h), 2017 hovers above my bed in Woodstock like a UFO. Weirdly, it manages to radiate a sense of strangeness even more powerfully than the work that hangs next to it, a schematic of what is purportedly an actual UFO, by the Romanian artist and abductee Ionel Talpazan. But maybe this isn’t all that odd, after all.

Unlike Talpazan, who is interested in giving us novel information, Henry wants to give us a novel experience. His paintings are properly phenomenological, in that they provoke our eyes, and force us to wrestle with the nature of our seeing. My painting, for instance, features a hard-edged block made of stacked bands of color, which resembles something like cross section of a rhomboid Neapolitan cookie, only with the Tricolore replaced with a spectrum of yellow, red, blue and indigo. Though the colors are electric in their vibrance, the spectrum is rendered in paint with a surface that is so preternaturally matte that it seems to gobble up the light that streams in from my picture window. This odd object floats on a field of intensely glossy white paint, a textural contrast that catalyzes a manic optical wavering between figure and ground, which is only exacerbated by the presence of what appears to be the object’s “shadow”, an airbrushed fuzz of color that suggests light filtering through frosted stained glass. It’s a trip to look at.

But Henry’s paintings are not just about seeing. They are also concerned with what eludes our sight all together. His obsession with color spectrums, which make frequent appearances in his work, speaks directly to this. The narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye is, of course, minuscule when measured against the broad suprasensible realm of X-rays, Gamma rays, Ultraviolet rays, and the like. By asking us to meditate on our blinkered vision within the context of his eye-popping optical tricks, he reveals our perception to be doubly contingent, on both the physical limits of our eyes and the processing limits of our brains. Each time I revisit the painting I am reminded that we are all islands of consciousness, surrounded by the deep waters of an invisible world.

— Chris Wiley, January 2020

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Image credits: As If Blue, 2017 (installation view). Lundgren Gallery, Mallorca (banner).

Adam Henry on And Per Se And, 2016

When reciting their alphabet, school children in the 1800s would end with “and per se and,” and this would eventually become our word for this symbol. It is very interesting to me how this shorthand has become such a well-used and understood symbol in our language. For me the symbol implies multiplicity. Because we are so inundated with information, daily life does feel as if there are endless options being added to every decision we make… the painting with the ampersands is a type of endless feedback loop. The symbols are caught between describing themselves and the negative space. I read that synesthesia could be something that is learned and I painted a diagram to evoke that experience in a painting. The color is very specific and carefully chosen to make the space optically challenging.

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Image credits: Adam Henry, And Per Se And, 2016 (detail), Acrylic and synthetic polymers on linen, 55 x 79 inches (banner); Adam Henry's copy of Theory of Colours by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, 2020 (above).

Studio Plants

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Image credits: Studio View, 2020. Photo by Adam Henry (banner); Studio View, 2020. Photo by Adam Henry (above).

Lucia Love on Handshakes and Networks

In the fall of 2016, Adam Henry’s project Handshakes and Networks debuted at the gallery 247365 which was operating from the ground floor of 57 Stanton Street, New York, NY. Positioned there on three plinths were a triad of aluminum cases, each containing a canvas cradled in foam, with white gloves included in each case to facilitate art handling. On each cradled canvas, a diagram with minor variations was crisply emblazoned on a fresh white void: one central equilateral triangle of gradating color, points capped off with circles, and a label of X, Y, and Z beneath—with one central character enlarged to denote which axis the piece corresponded to. The evocation of the Cartesian coordinate system unifying the three canvases effectively transformed this initial presentation into the dimensional origin from which all hyperplanes may emanate.

Since this original configuration, these paintings have been sent off individually to chart their courses across the globe. Every year sees another set of handoffs, while Henry keeps track of the provenance in a ledger which is publicly viewable online. The only requirement for owning one of these traveling works is the desire to be a forthright steward and connoisseur of what's been created, and the promise that you’ll see the work to its next destination when the times comes. Of course, each painting can be appreciated as an effortless production of precise geometric forms, or for the balance and harmony of color theory displayed —but musing over the implications of how these works move through the world is just as intriguing. 

The first subterranean layer any contemplative aesthete encounters through Handshakes and Networks is how giving these paintings away has the potential to subvert the psychology of commodity fetishism that rules our capitalist society. Like one of Ray Johnson’s correspondence artworks that exists to circumvent the market, these paintings enter directly into the possession of collectors, who may then appraise the work’s artistic value; collectors make this appraisal without the worth of creative labor becoming obscured by capital accumulation.

As the years pass and the network of participants grows with each handoff, another circumvention occurs. The ledger where provenance is recorded begins to act as a data set. In an age where data has been touted as the most valuable resource, collecting coordinates from an international community could be seen as a profitable venture. But in the true spirit of Dadaist experimentation, Henry has kept tabs on locations to activate the coordinates of the paintings in order to triangulate a fourth location, or the implied “origin” point of the painting locations’ coordinate axes.

This fourth point will relocate every time the X, Y and Z coordinates move, and has the potential to reside in the clouds or beneath the earth’s surface, depending on the mathematical outcome. Continuing to run this formula (which offsets speculative marketing by refusing its logic) instead invites all participants to imagine the invisible constellation of relationships that connects us all.

— Lucia Love, 2020

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Image credits: Handshakes and Networks, 2016 (installation view). 247365, New York (banner); A Plane in Three-Dimensional Space X, 2016, Acrylic and synthetic polymers on linen, custom aluminum travel case, 16 x 14 inches. (above); Handshakes and Networks, 2016 (detail views) (below).

Mount Fuji, Japan, 2019

In fall of 2019, Adam Henry visited Mt Fuji, Japan. He created a series of images and a time-lapse video at dawn, capturing an unusual atmospheric phenomenon of clouds circulating around the mountain's top and over the adjoining lake. The experience left an impression—subsequent paintings have explored representations of the often-unseen patterns of light, space, and atmosphere.

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Image credits: Photograph and time-lapse video of Mount Fuji, Japan, 2019. Photo by Adam Henry.

Available work: Untitled (sd2sp2gf4), 2021

”Despite their familiarity in all ways, given genre, appearances, and their varied presentations, Henry’s paintings seem to be ever-so slightly off register — they do not sit comfortably within the terms they appear to subscribe to. This is because there is always a subtle conceptual, or aesthetic inversion of what is expected.”

— Saul Ostrow, 2016

James Casey on Untitled (4crg4), 2016

Over the course of the past nine months, Adam Henry’s painting has been slow to reveal its secrets—its inky blue surface only reflecting the comings and goings of domestic life during a global pandemic. But as the seasons change, the painting begins to phantasmagorically transform, hinting at something else in the soft winter’s light. A hazy spectral spectrum clouds the center, never fully emerging. As we enter a new year with all sorts of potential in place, the fuzzy blot of warmth that radiates is a portentous omen—we hope—of better things to come.

— James Casey, January 2020

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Image credits: Alien Beatnik Siren, 2014. Joe Sheftel Gallery, New York. Photo by Etienne Frossard (banner).

“To help shape, shift, or challenge someone’s perception is the greatest power we have as artists. Asking questions about how we think and how we communicate these thoughts is the dialogue I hope an audience has with and around the work. ”

— Adam Henry

For more information on Adam Henry:
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Journal credits: Design by Nori Pao.