VIEWING ROOM:
CHINA ADAMS
REDESIGNING AMERICA
36 x 42 inches, AAA Map of USA (Free with membership), 2005
ARTIST TALK WITH CHINA ADAMS
THURSDAY JULY 28, 2022
7PM ET / 4PM PT
View the Recording
Artist Talk Slides PDF
Exhibitions:
NL XX LA
Voyage LA
ARTSY
LA Weekly
Art in America
Artforum
Additional Selected Press
Curation Projects:
LA Times
finearttrekkininglewood
LA wood Show
Before the Wilt
China Adams is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work merges written documentation with object making. She relies on a range of materials, frequently repurposed ones. Her large scale drawings examine the play between art and document. She has exhibited internationally, and has had several solo shows at Ace Gallery, Los Angeles, Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles, and The Porch Gallery, Ojai. Public collections include the Berkeley Art Museum, Orange County Art Museum and the Carnegie Art Museum. Born in 1970 in San Francisco, Adams earned her BFA from UCLA and MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is an Assistant Professor at USC Roski School of Art & Design, where she has taught since 2009.
As a curator, Adams’ exhibitions have received critical acclaim. Most recently Adams coordinated a month long collaboration with 80 other artists, Massage Generated Energy Drawings, which examined the process of generating and exchanging positive energy. Adams lives and works in Los Angeles.
OPEN SKY
28 x 46 inches, Pen and pencil on paper, 2020
Rock Walls
2018-2020
The notion of secrecy, privacy, and multi-faceted character pervades much of Adams’ past work, exploring it symbolically through drawings of rock walls is a logical progression.
Adams pushes this metaphor, exploring the rock walls as emblems of the psyche, finding cross-over between nature and the mind. In a sense, we can act as or be a “rock wall.” We can aspire to the kind of austerity delivered in nature.
Adams deals with the walls in an economical, stylized manner. She works this way to avoid a literal representation of nature. She emphasizes their stoic beauty, their stillness, quietness, and the web of mystery that hides within them.
Exhibited at:
Project LA: https://www.prjctla.com/nl-xx-la/
& Porch Gallery: https://porchgalleryojai.com/towers-and-walls-new-works-by-sally-england-and-china-adams/
Impossible Attempt
to Un-Ugly The Ugly
(A suite of six redacted poems)
2022
IMPOSSIBLE ATTEMPT TO UN-UGLY THE UGLY - A SUITE OF SIX REDACTED POEMS ( DETAIL, VI)
Massage generated energy drawings, 2018
MASSAGE GENERATED ENERGY DRAWINGS - PERFORMANCE/INSTALLATION VIEW
Dimensions variable, Adams' body, equipment for massage, various drawing supplies, video camera, 2018
On April 26th, 2018, Adams launched Massage-Generated Energy Drawings, a continuation of her exploration and expansion of positive energy and healing touch as artistic mediums. The project, a large-scale collaboration with 80 other artists, ran for twenty days at the Porch Gallery Ojai through May 15th, 2018. Each day Adams performed four, hour-long massages on participating artist-collaborators. During each massage, a bell steward would ring a bell three times. At the sound of the bell, the massage recipient vocalized the first word that came to their mind. The bell steward kept a log of the three words collected during each session.
After completing the massages, Adams worked into the evening compiling the 12 words and incorporating them into a drawing. In the spirit of Dada-Esque poetry, the aim was to create a series of pictures that reflected the essence of the collaboration/positive energy exchange between Adams and the artists who received her massages.
At the end of the 20 days, twenty drawings had been completed and hung around the same gallery space. The drawings represented the communal connection, underpinning the entire project.
LA Squirrel watch, 2016
On her lunch break, sitting under a tree at a city university campus, China Adams found herself watching the squirrels at play, running up and down the trunks and branches and dashing about in the green turf. This species is so adaptive and pervasive that few stop to consider their movements and antics in human habitats. With wry humor and keen observation Adams began to map and record their steps and activities, as one would an elaborate choreography, later creating delicate, pristine drawings based on her field studies. Accompanying each drawing is a meticulously hand-lettered graphite "playbill" of texts combining description, poetic musings, and notes on the squirrels' "performances." Though seemingly ridiculous initially, what emerges is a critical meditation on landscape art through the ages and its need to project control over wild and chaotic nature through representational strategies, such as fixed-point perspective and cartography, even extending to Disney's anthropomorphized and thoroughly civilized critters. At the heart of Adams' piece, however, is a desire to patiently let nature's inner structures and workings reveal themselves without interference, discovering commonalities between various animal movements and our own, and acknowledging the beauty, awe, pleasure, and purpose in both.
New Perspectives on the Natural, by Constance Mallinson (PDF)
a certain period of time, 2015
A CERTAIN PERIOD OF TIME 1
20.5 x 60 inches, Graphite on paper, 2015
China Adams’ series A Certain Period of Time explores the notion of the passage of time. The overall structures of the drawings allude to graphs and other mechanized time-keeping devices like EKG heart monitors and earthquake recording devices. However, her drawings are stripped of actual data. The drawings pay homage to the elegance of graphic structures by intentionally withholding any existing data. Since the drawings lack data as a driving force in their construction, they invert the conceptual nature of real graphs and become aestheticized drawings.
Adams makes the drawings line by line, using a ruler and one in and out-breath per line. The process is meditative, as she tracks her breath (and thus time). The outside contour line, which defines the outer edge of the entire drawing, develops slowly as each line is added (vertically next to the one that immediately preceded it). One could think of the drawings as a highly controlled form of Abstract Expressionism, as Adams “feels” her way through the drawings adding new lines according to what makes sense in relationship to the lines that she has already laid down. The immediacy of Adams’ process, is essential because it reveals that the work evolves in the “doing” rather than in the planning.
Exhibited at Ace Gallery & Porch Gallery
white flags silent chimes, 2009
CHIME 2
33.5 x 31 x 2 inches, Junk mail, monofilament, Japanese toothpicks, recycled mailing tube, glue, 2009
With White Flags and Silent Chimes, China Adams continues to investigate recycled materials by creating artworks from the detritus that accumulates at her home, including the junk mail that arrives daily in her mailbox. Using such material, Adams transforms the inherent worthless character of the material, while not concealing its origin, into something renewed, re-contextualized, and reformed.
In these works, Adams addresses the systematic production of waste, its perceived ugliness, and the sense of environmental failure that so much waste implies. By transforming these scorned materials into meticulously crafted objects, she constructs an alternative view of the “cast off” as something potentially useful.
Exhibited at Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles
Art in America review
a novel attempT, 2009
A NOVEL ATTEMPT
6 hanging columns each approximately 72 x 16 inches in diameter, Novel written by China Adams, colored paper, plastic tubing, 2009
In 2008 Adams wrote a novel, a lengthy endeavor, which produced an unsatisfactory draft. Once she had completed the novel, she cut it into small strips, which she used to make a hanging sculpture.
betsy ross perversions, 2006
During the George Bush (Junior) years, Adams made The Betsy Ross Perversion pieces. His infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech, along with his relentless use of the word "evil," disturbed her, and she began reflecting on how information can be perverted. In turn, Adams pondered how a symbol, the US flag, could be torqued and disfigured, its symbolic meaning twisted. In 2022, following the horror storm of Trump's presidency, the significance of the Betsy Ross Perversion pieces feels more relevant than ever.
Previously featured in ‘Pre’ at Black Ball Projects Gallery
The New Yorker
flights of fancy / winter garbage chunks, 2006-2008
POLAR INTERLUDE (ACCOMPANYING NOTARY)
20 x 14 inches, Ink and notary’s signature on paper (framed) 2006
Flights of Fancy
In addition to the outrageous array of mutant funk fashion, each garment is accompanied by a framed, notarized letter recounting the circumstances of the work’s genesis, alongside a holiday-snapshot-style image of Adams modeling the outfit; the snapshots are then digitally inserted into a stock landscape photo. Landscapes can be anywhere, from the Alps to an equatorial rice paddy. These low-income virtual-dream vacations — or Flights of Fancy, as her exhibition title classifies them — are the actual artworks; the clothes are just evidence left behind.
“I started with this idea that I had when I was in debt from all this health stuff, and just always scrounging for money, and never getting out of this small space. And then this thought I’ve always had about advertising: how so much of what people buy is an idea about what is going to happen when…I get the right gown and if I ever go to Cancun, this’ll look fabulous!’ And I wondered, could I create this whole thing all from right here? I do the pictures here, do the whole composites here, I print it here, the clothes are all made here. So it’s this complete imagined exotic journey that all takes place in my tiny apartment.”
Doug Harvey, LA Weekly
Flights of Fancy Exhibited at Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles
Winter Garbage Chunks
During the winter of 2008 Adams collected all of her dry garbage. At the end of each week she consolidated her waste into one plaster coated chunk. Placing them all together, she formed Winter Garbage Chunks, which she presented alongside her Flights of Fancy wardrobe as merchandizing ephemera.
Winter Garbage Chunks Exhibited at University of Las Vegas, Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art
seventeen names, 2003-2004
With recognition and homage as the central theme in Adams' installation of seventeen abstracted portraits, Adams considers these various faceless portraits as representations that embody the sitter's essence rather than their physical likeness. Inspired by graffiti taggers, corporate trademarks, monograms, tombstones, and automatic writing, Adams' portraits address the notion of how much we can interpret identity through a text-based portrait. To what extent can we understand people in ways that do not involve their physical appearance, a consideration that becomes increasingly relevant with expanding virtual identities.
Ace Gallery, Press Release 2008
premonition scrolls, 2001
In March 1999, Adams began experiencing visions in her sleep. These premonitions (1,242 in total) occurred several times daily until December 29, 1999. Although Adams initially ignored these visions, by April 9, she had experienced such a persistent bombardment, that she was forced to take them seriously. Adams began recording them as drawings. She transcribed each vision onto a single sheet of paper, which she rolled and sealed with hand-stitching. Each month’s scrolls are presented together in one enclosed, wall-mounted vitrine.
Exhibited at Ace Gallery, Los Angeles
China Adams at Ace Gallery
blood consumption, 1999-2000
Adams consumed the blood drawn from nine loved ones. Notarized documents attest to the date and time of each ingestion. Accompanying the documents are studio photographs of each individual and the glass tumblers from which she drank. Adams’ intention, similar to the way children press bloodied thumbs together to become blood brothers, was to make a gesture of affection and loyalty. Exploring perceptual juxtapositions is a strategy that Adams has repeatedly explored to challenge conventional values.
Ace Gallery, Press Release 1999
ms. american woman, 1998
MS. AMERICAN WOMAN: NAMING THE QUEEN
Dimensions variable, Photograph, hand-sewn sash, vitrine, notarized certificate, 1998
Intrigued by the blitz of press around the JonBenét Ramsey case of 1996/1997, Adams decided to infiltrate the world of pageantry. Adams entered the 1997-1998 Ms. American Woman beauty pageant to create an exhibition from her experience as a contestant. To do this, Adams embarked on a (tongue-in-cheek) odyssey to enhance her femininity. Over seven months, she diligently worked to improve her posture, develop expertise in applying cosmetics, minimize her use of foul language, and enhance her figure through aerobicizing.
The project culminated in Washington DC, where she won the fourth place Ms. American woman title after being crowned Ms. Southwest California. Adams' installation consisted of color video stills, highlighting climactic competition moments, Adams’ trophy, hand-sewn pageant garments, and notarized certificates documenting her transformation into a beauty queen.
paintings without paint, 1997
Paintings Without Paint documents Adams’ performance as Phoebe, a phone sex operator. After concluding that her graveyard shift at the Florence Crittenton Center prevented her from devoting sufficient time to making art, Adams sought a job that would allow her to work from home while creating her art. She took a job as a phone sex operator, resulting in a series of taped telephone conversations, notarized documents, and hand-sewn paintings. Adams carefully guided and surreptitiously recorded her dialogues with clients, which mixed descriptions of sex with discussions about art. Accompanying these recordings are notarized documents that attest to the date of each conversation and the paintings on display (small three-dimensional wall constructions made from unpainted canvas) that she built and sewed during the telephone exchanges.
mail drawings, 1997
From January 1 through December 31, 1996, Adams collected all of the paper mail she received. Letters, bills, magazines, promotional flyers, parcel packaging, and other types of mail were separated according to their months of arrival and reduced to pulp through traditional paper-making methods. She recycled the pulp by hand to make hundreds of standardized blank drawings (all are roughly 6 X 8 inches), which accompany notarized statements that attested to the mail’s origin and month of arrival.
the stitch and hide procedure, 1995-1996
THE OFFICIAL STITCH AND HIDE PROCEDURE: BOX #14
21 x 40 x 24 inches, Possessions, waterproof tarp, dental floss, glass vitrine, 1995 -1996
The Official Stitch and Hide Procedure involved the development of a self monitoring system that enabled Adams to determine that over 70% of her possessions were burdensome and unnecessary. Adams sewed them into sculptural pouches, recontextualizing them as artworks. Adams continues to track her acquisitions to ensure that she acquires nothing new without first giving something up. The goal is to maintain the downward revision of possessions she achieved in 1996.
Adams' interest in waste, built-in obsolescence, and production glut, particularly as they pertain to issues of environmental frailty and sustainability aspirations, have been constant drivers of her creative production.
Exhibited at Ace Gallery, Los Angeles
contract of sale, 1994
Adams photographically inventoried her body parts, had her confession of sins notarized and offered for sale certain of her bones as religious relics to be accessed by purchasers after her death.
Exhibited at Ace Gallery, Los Angeles
Notarized, 1993
Adams photographically inventoried her body parts, had her confession of sins notarized and offered for sale certain of her bones as religious relics to be accessed by purchasers after her death.
Exhibited at Ace Gallery, Los Angeles
