Priska C. Juschka is pleased to introduce Samuel T. Adams with Delphic Affairs, his first solo exhibition at the gallery. An amalgamate of forms and colors, Adams’ luxuriously painted canvases lure their audience into a realm of possibilities as entire compositions turn into visual fragrances- exuding palettes seemingly inconceivable to the unsuspecting eye, and rather to be processed by other senses.

Hovering between representation and abstraction, Adams’ paintings capture by way of postponing gratification- like the Delphic Oracle puzzling rather than solving the riddles and canon of the composition. As if there may be an unknown estrangement, his surfaces blurt colors outwards toward the expecting viewer, aggressively bright, sweeping and relentless.

With opulent visual content, Adams’ works allude to an array of mysterious references, mirrored by their equally cryptic titles- Halo, Ascension, Croaker, Jester and Ballista- swaying between fragmented religious, mythological and historic connotations. By deliberately omitting the narrative and by formally dissociating himself from a particular academic vocabulary, Adams playfully and virtuously, examines the Renaissance as much as Modernism and Pop Art without ascribing himself to a specific period, in a libertarian and most liberating way. Delphic Affairs refers to what lies beneath the surface, analogous to the Greek mythology, to be discovered by an unequivocal and undeterred eye (while taking in the sulfur stench from the navel of the world) and allowing itself to absorb the complex palate with all its implications and without wavering.

Samuel T. Adams was born in Cincinnati, OH and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He holds a BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design, Columbus, OH and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY. His work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions, nationally and internationally, including Weak Painting at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, Taiwan; A New Currency, organized by Dan Cameron at 55 Delancey Street, New York, NY ; and Salad Days at Artists Space, New York, NY. He received both the Alumni Scholarship Award (2009) and the Presidential Award (2008) during his graduate studies and was also selected for the Milton and Sally Avery Fellowship, Austerlitz, NY as well as an Artist Fellowship at the VermontStudioCenter, Johnston, VT.