On View
Gallery Hopping: Valerio Adami Brings Vibrant Colors and Melancholic Thoughts to Galerie Templon
Adami was a key member of the Narrative Figuration movement.
Amah-Rose Abrams
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Valerio Adami’s exhibition of recent works at Galerie Templon is a double milestone marking 40 years since the artist’s first solo exhibition at Brussels’ Palais des Beaux-Arts, in 1966, and celebrating the gallery’s 50th anniversary.
Adami was a key member of the Narrative Figuration movement, a central European offshoot of Pop Art concerned with Everyday Mythologies, or “Mythologies Quotidiennes.” Its artists took to the appropriation of advertising logos and slogans and merged them with symbols and motifs from history, using a more directly political angle than the main Pop Art movement.
Recognizable for his strong black lines dividing vivid color fields, the Pop Art aesthetic Adami adopted in the 1960s has evolved into something more challenging and abstract, though his work remained highly figurative.
Recent paintings contain everyday scenes, such as La Bayadère (Revisited) (2010) encompassing travel, literature, and cultural life, or popular motifs from art history as in the work Le Pont (2012).
Although Adami’s work exudes an undeniable vibrancy due to the deep colors and the strong black lines he has used throughout his career, there is also a sense of isolation in his compositions. Characters are often depicted alone within a vast landscape, or facing away from each other rather than interacting.
Tinged with melancholy, these striking works, filled with literary references and human situations, gain a timeless allure.
“Valerio Adami, Recent Works” will be on view at Galerie Templon Brussels until December 23, 2016.
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