There are two exhibitions by Vancouver based artist Adam Lupton that are currently up in the city. One at Positive Negative Gallery, the other at the Gam Gallery. One show serves as a darker psychological look into the past, the other is a metaphysical imagining of the plurality of universes that lay before us in each instant. We recommend you visit both!
At the Gam Gallery, Lupton has set the mood of introspective, dark and broody with his show entitled Not Everything That Goes Around Comes Back Around. His paintings are evocative of the storm that the mind often unleashes onto the self. Each painted figure struggles with it's own past.
The Last Message Never Sent - 36 x 36, Oil on Canvas
When a piece of mirror is shattered and the glass settles, the shards reveal multiple isolated vantage points, Lupton visually incorporates this splitting technique into his paintings, and as a result, the viewer is lured beyond the surface of the painting delving into the thoughts of the subjects. These fractured portraits are also visually interrupted through the use of blurring; parts of faces, arms and legs are smeared as if they were being sucked down a rabbit hole. This contrasting of sharpness and blurriness reveals the extremes of memory, some elements stay forever etched, others fade over time.
Girl From The North Country/Just Like A Woman - 36 x 36, Oil on Canvas
Alongside the figurative paintings are a series of framed quotes, these serve as intimate meditations that allow the mind to meander into itself, and consider the context of ones own life, memories and paths taken, or not taken.
After spending time with these works, the title of the exhibition implodes into itself. Whilst it is true that not everything that goes around, comes back around; through the power of remembrance, it actually does. Not in the reality that we know, but always in the memories that we have.
Lupton's second exhibition, What's In Store For Me In The Direction I Don't Take?, at the Positive Negative Gallery shifts the trajectory of his paintings into the future of imagined possibilities. Again, the blurring and the sharp shard lines are employed to articulate the thoughts and paths of his subjects, yet there is a much different energy to this series.
Butterfly Effect 1 - 30 x 30, Oil on Canvas
Aesthetically, Lupton has used a lighter colour palette within all of the works and the splintering is taken to an intensified level; movement and trajectories are revealed. The subjects of this series are all still mentally struggling through some sort of pivotal and difficult moment. Each painting is a visualisation of the potentiality of each individual and the complex layered universes that extend out from this particular instant in their lives.
Lupton's work is illustrative of the complexities of our daily lives: the elasticity of time, the fleeting power of memory, and the fracturing of our identities in past, present, future realms. He is a time traveler who reveals the Eternal Return through his painting. Take a journey this week, head over to these two exhibition spaces and enjoy the the ride.
What's In Store For Me In The Direction I Don't Take? is on at the Positive Negative Gallery until July 26th. The gallery is open Thursday - Saturday 1-4pm. This is the last exhibition at the Positive Negative Gallery before it permanently closes its doors in August.
Not Everything That Goes Around Comes Back Around is on at the Gam Gallery until July 26th as well. The gallery is open Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 1-5pm.
You can find more information about Adam Lupton and his work by visiting his website.
Things I Don't Remember - 30 x 30, Oil on Canvas
- a long minute of time will elapse until all those conditions out of which you were evolved return in the wheel of the cosmic process. And then you will find every pain and every pleasure, every friend and every enemy, every hope and every error, every blade of grass and every ray of sunshine once more, and the whole fabric of things which make up your life.- Friedrich Nietzsche
