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Artwork Description

For nearly twenty years, Adam Simon has been making paintings using outlines of motifs culled from our shared visual culture. Simon began his painting practice when working at Esquire magazine in the 1990s. Fascinated with the catalogues of stock photography (before Getty changed the industry), which attempted to index gestures, objects, and places into a metonymic archive of normative moments, Simon further concentrated these images into silhouettes. The outlines, transformed into acetate stencils, were then transferred onto paintings, first as single forms and subsequently in a variety of increasingly complex fragmentations, duplications, and repetitions. In the process, easily recognizable shapes overlapped, eroded, or mirrored into near ornamental abstraction. In the series, Great Figures, isolated forms—achieved through fragmenting corporate logos and icons of art history—float against a monochromatic background, reminiscent of the sumptuous colors and bold compositions of Henri Matisse. These paintings are compelling and beautiful while they may also present themselves as psychologically charged and culturally engaged.