Adam Dant: STANDING UNDER

Adam Baumgold Gallery presents an exhibition of new perspective drawings by Adam Dant, “Standingunder,” from September 8 through October 21, 2005. In his third New York solo exhibition at Adam Baumgold Gallery, Adam Dant further extends his manipulation of systems for containing narrative with the invention of a humorous and bizarre new orthodoxy. Dant’s use of what could be called “Underneathism” parodies the unnatural objectivity of familiar map overviews and infinity perspectives by literally and visually going beyond and beneath.

In large sepia drawings such as ‘Under the Beach,’ Dant employs inverted isometric projection that creates the effect of submerging or burying the viewer in order to emphasize a feeling of alienation as a curiously malevolent gaze is adopted. The alienation he is referring to is not strictly philosophical or personal, but societal, as in ‘surveillance culture’. Dant feels societal behavior such as surveillance is undermining to ‘normal’ interactions, as it tries to colonize simple acts in life-like a trip to the beach.

In common with Dant’s previous exhibition, (“The Bureau for the Investigation of the Subliminal Image,”) unnatural modes of perception and literalism are used to draw attention to the comic negotiations and ridiculous conclusions of common culture . Whereas, the BISI represented a parody of the subjective gaze, ‘underneathism’ does the same for ‘objective’ representations of the world.

The discovery and early use of numerous perspective systems is deliberately referred to in works such as Dant’s centrally planned London underground map redrawn according to Albertian principles, illustrations of Pozzo decorating the ceiling of St. Ignazio in Rome and various common views providing a lineage for ‘underneathism’ as a distinct area of philosophical inquiry. As with Vasari’s comment on Mantegna’s perspectival puzzles the works of ‘underneathism’ are ‘as painful to see as they are difficult to execute’.

Adam Dant, 37, lives in London and is known as the creator of Donald Parsnips’ Daily Journal, which was published from 1995-99, and appeared weekly in the Independent. He created “The Anecdotal Plan of Tate Britain” that won the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2002. Adam Dant had a solo exhibition, “The People Who Live on the Plank,” at The Drawing Room in London in 2003. Dant is currently completing a major commission of “underneathean” imagery for the BBC in London. He has exhibited worldwide and his works are in the collections of the Arts Council of England, The Museum of London, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and numerous other public and private collections.

Adam Dant: STANDING UNDER