A bat out of hell

Sans titre (2016) is pleased to present ‘A bat out of hell,’ Alicia Adamerovich’s first solo show at the gallery. For the artist it follows three months of residencies in Europe, first at Palazzo Monti (Brescia, Italy), then at Moly Sabata (Sablons, France), where she produced a new body of work composed of paintings, ceramics, drawings, and a new series of furniture-sculptures specially conceived for the Sans titre (2016) gallery space. The exhibition is conceived as the counterpart of a second show which will take place at Galerie Tator in Lyon from June 10th, 2021. Inspired by the artistic trend of Biomorphism, Alicia Adamerovich’s practice studies the anthropomorphic nature of objects, sensations, and emotions, and highlights their creative potential. Her work takes form from her unconscious, from her interior thoughts and her psychic evolution. The artist divides her body of work into two distinct entities: “diurnal thoughts” and “nocturnal thoughts.” For ‘A bat out of hell’ at Sans titre (2016), the artist concentrated on the latter, that ones that appear when night falls and bats awaken. The figure of the bat - the only mammal in the world able to fly, which moves about only at night in a quick, lively, staccato manner - is omnipresent in the artist’s work. When it perceives a ray of light or when it encounters a conflict, the animal instinctively puts up its spurs to defend itself and injure the individual in front of it. In her work, Alicia Adamerovich depicts this precise moment when anguish surges in half-sleep. She develops forms both organic and animal. Some reveal a malign character; they seem to escape the frames and envelop us. The artist’s graphite drawings and paintings represent a bridge between the real world and a fictional space. They’re intentionally produced in a portrait format, personifying the compositions. They express varied sentiments, such as fear, anguish, and perplexity. In the manner of her predecessors, like the couple Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy, who painted dream landscapes and underwater scenes populated with strange biomorphic forms, Alicia Adamerovich, in her works on paper, illustrates a certain tension within a phantasmagorical architecture situated within an infinite horizon. She creates a balance of power between these hybrid organisms stacked upon each other or surging to the front of the pictorial composition. They act as a projection of the US political situation in recent months; the artist retains a bitter memory thereof. The handmade frames are for Alicia Adamerovich a way of leaving paper behind and exceeding drawing’s limitations in dimension. They reinforce the pictorial composition of the subject and play with hierarchies by conferring upon them the status of icons. The furniture-sculptures that the artist conceived for the exhibition space were produced from bits of recycled wood, cut, sanded and dyed by her hands. The choice to use natural wood and the importance of demonstrating an artisanal craft are at the heart of the sculptor’s engagement. She confesses to having been fascinated as a youth by a neighbour in her village in Pennsylvania who had built all the furniture in his house by hand. The artist means to propose an alternative to industrial production. The link with Art Nouveau, a movement that arose in reaction to the massive industrialization of the end of the 19th century, is evident; Alicia Adamerovich also takes up its formal codes. The rounded curves of the furniture allow her to extend the limits of the physicality of the object into the surrounding space. They seem to become animate, like chimerical figures, and are at once functional, yet paradoxically endowed with a certain fragility. Alicia Adamerovich (born in 1989 in Latrobe in Pennsylvania, USA) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She earned a BA in design at Pennsylvania State University and studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. In 2018, Alicia Adamerovich won a scholarship from UrbanGlass (Brooklyn, NY). En 2021, the artist participated in residency programs at Palazzo Monti (Brescia, IT) and Moly Sabata (Sablons, FR), and in the coming months she will join the residency program at Del Vaz Projects in Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions including ‘The Loner’s Castle’ at Projet Pangée (Montreal, ON); at Odd Ark Annex (Los Angeles, CA); ‘Vibrant Matter’ at the FISK gallery (Portland, OR). This year, she will show her work at Galerie Tator (Lyon, FR); at Palazzo Monti (Brescia, IT); at Del Vaz Projects (Los Angeles, CA); at Y2K Group (New York, NY); at Cob Gallery (London, UK). Alicia Adamerovich has participated in numerous group shows: ‘The Symbolists, The Flowers of Evil’ at Hesse Flatow (New York, NY); ‘Palazzo Monti: Transatlantico’ at Mana Contemporary (Jersey City, NJ); at the stands of Project Pangée at Art Toronto (Toronto, ON) and Material Art Fair (Mexico City, MX); ‘Tulips’ at Kapp Kapp (Philadelphia, PA); ‘A Fairly Secret Army’ at Wild Palms (Dusseldorf, DE); and ‘Serenity Later’ at Kunstraum (Brooklyn, NY).