Adam Putnam

Adam Putnam Interlude (eruption) 

Friday January 26, 7pm

Gordon Robichaux 22 East 17 Street, 9th floor

Doors 6:30pm, performance 7pm

Gordon Robichaux is pleased to present a performance by Adam Putnam in conjunction with Brian Buczak 'Man Looks at the World’ currently on view at the gallery and Ortuzar Projects.

For many years, my time spent with Eldfell † has been nothing more than a fleeting thought, an image pulled from deep dreams, like a silent door opening in the mind. Earlier this year, I visited Eldfell for the first time, and as it happens, a few weeks after the death of my mother. Reeling from a combination of loss and wonder, I staggered across the lava flow in a frenzy, and over the course of a single afternoon, blindly and desperately shot several sheets of 4x5 film. Having been born in 1973, I am the same age as the lava, an improbable twin, and because of this I cannot help felling a strange familial bond, a line drawn from my birth to Her death. 

—Adam Putnam, 2023

†51 years ago, on January 23, 1973, a previously-unknown fissure in the Earth beneath the small Icelandic island of Heimaey opened up less than a mile from the town of Vestmannaeyjar. Within a day’s time, almost the entire island was safely evacuated, and geologists began to monitor the eruption. The newly-formed Eldfell volcano erupted for about six months, covering much of Vestmannaeyjar in ash, destroying several hundred homes, and sending lava flows toward the harbor.

Through photography, drawing, sculpture, and film, Adam Putnam (b. 1973) examines the social and aesthetic dimensions of human bodies, often by pushing the physical limits of his own. Wrestling with the body’s relationship to light and space, Putnam engages with live action as a means of investigating the intersection of our physical selves with the architectural spaces we inhabit. Putnam’s work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions at P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Kunstverein Munchen, Munich, Germany; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; and Andrew Kreps, New York, NY.

Image: Adam Putnam, Obelisk (pumice), 2023, courtesy P.P.O.W.