ADAM LIAM ROSE: STAGES OF FALLOUT
September 4 - October 10, 2021
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 4th, 6-9pm
The Java Project is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Jerusalem born, Brooklyn-based artist Adam Liam Rose. In Stages of Fallout, Rose offers a selection of graphite drawings and mixed media works, examining the relationship between physical and psychological spaces of “safety.” Completed between 2019-2021, works in the exhibition draw inspiration from “The Family Fallout Shelter,” a manual distributed to the American public in the 1950’s through the US Department of Civil and Defense Mobilization. Disseminated at the emergence of the Atomic Age, the manual was created in an attempt to provide a sense of agency to an unsettled American public. Through these works, Rose explores the roles that promise, illusion, and cheap tricks play in numbing an unsuspecting public to disaster.
Rendered in dense graphite and rigorous cross-hatching, Stages of Fallout oscillates between presence and absence, as depictions of fallout shelters melt and often explode into optical illusion and celestial settings. Presented as a constellation of steel framed graphite works, they wind around the walls of the Java Project - melding paper and steel. With Stages of Fallout, Rose explores how architectural space can paradoxically lend to feelings of safety and horror – an uncanny state of being.
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Adam Liam Rose (b. 1990) is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, installation, video and drawing. Born in Jerusalem and raised mostly in the United States, his works investigate the aesthetic systems of power embedded within architecture. Rose received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago ('12) and an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts (‘17). He was a fellow at the Bronx Museum of the Arts' AIM Program, The Drawing Center’s Viewing Program, and the Art & Law Program. Rose was awarded artist residencies at Triangle Arts Association (Brooklyn, NY), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE), Ox-Bow School of Art (Saugatuck, MI), A-Z West: Institute of Investigative Living (Joshua Tree, CA), the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT) and the Chicago Artists Coalition's HATCH Residency (Chicago, IL). His publication 'Between the Bars' (Genderfail Press, 2021) is in the artists' book collection of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, PRATT Institute and The Frick Fine Arts Library in Pittsburgh. Rose joined as co-director at artist-run gallery Ortega y Gasset Projects in 2019. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.