Adam Stennett

LAUNCH F18 is pleased to present Isometric Blindness, a solo exhibition by artist Adam Stennett. The new work continues Stennett’s exploration of perceived reality, utopia, dystopia, and the human condition. It includes vague references to historical atrocities, corruption, and absurdly criminal failures committed by governments, institutions, corporations and individuals. “Miracle chemicals” are marketed as saviors. Humans and animals are dusted with glee. Water supplies are tainted. People drink poison for decades. Profit above all else. This is a continuing story and not an isolated event. It is a system of skewed priorities that rolls over us like heavy clouds.

The main gallery space contains an immersive installation involving water, objects, video, and sound, partially inspired by a transcendental bout of Montezuma’s Revenge the artist experienced during a trip to Mexico back in February. This overwhelming reaction of the body, coupled with witnessing dead turtles strangled by vast swaths of rotting Sargassum, helped to set the tone for the creation of this work.

An adjacent, secondary space features black and white, hyperreal paintings on paper. The imagery includes flowing dark water echoing the video projection in the main space along with still life paintings and Xerox copies depicting historically significant, and culturally charged objects. The imagery alludes, with a continuing dark humor, to the shortsightedness and futility of humans in general. The failures that repeat themselves, circle around indefinitely, and appear to be the inevitable destiny of humanity.

In a third small space that doubles as the office for the gallery, the poignant video work Four Minutes Fifty-Two Seconds of Breathing (completed in April of 2020 during the first month of the lockdown) can be viewed in a more intimate setting on a flat screen with headphones.

Adam Stennett was born in Kotzebue, Alaska in 1972, grew up in Oregon and lives in Upstate New York. Stennett explores notions of utopia/dystopia through painting, video and multimedia works including a recent endurance performance at Pioneer Works called the Arctic Artist Survival Shack. His work is included in numerous public and private collections and has been widely exhibited in both, national and international exhibitions at venues including Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, the Portland Art Museum, the Chelsea Art Museum, the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, The National Arts Club, as well as at a variety of established galleries. Stennett's work has been reviewed and featured in publications such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Sun, Frieze, Art In America, Bomb Magazine, Contemporary Magazine, Whitehot Magazine, BlackBook, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and Esquire among others. Stennett has lectured and participated on panels as an artist at Georgetown University, School of Visual Arts, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, New York Film Academy, Hunter College, and Willamette University. Stennett was a founding faculty member of School of Apocalypse that began at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn in 2016.

Isometric Blindness

October 22 – December 3, 2022

Press Release