David Adamo’s Untitled (Wood 4), 2014, is a prominent example of the artist’s unique approach to sculpture. Covered in chip marks, Untitled conveys Adamo’s artistic practice as one of subtraction rather than addition. The irregular carvings encourage viewers to contemplate the actions behind the marks, with each divot serving as a visual echo of Adamo’s scraping, carving and chipping immobilized in time. This process-centered nature of Adamo’s art inherently emphasizes the materiality of the mediums he works in. When viewing the present lot, it is difficult to not consider the form of the wood block that preceded the sculpture. In Adamo's wooden works, viewers are urged to contemplate the use and manipulation of the material that has shaped the course of human history.
“One of my formative childhood memories is picking up a twig in the forest and gently peeling away the layer of bark with the blade of my pocket knife, revealing an entirely new form underneath and fundamentally transforming the twig through this simple act of removing material.”
—David AdamoAdamo has had several solo exhibitions over the past decade and a half, including at Ibid Projects, London in 2010, UNTITLED, New York (2011), the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo (2015), Whitespace, Miami (2016), Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels (2017) and Peter Freeman, Inc., New York (2022). He was also included in several group shows including the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2010), Some schools are cages and some schools are wings at Museo de Arte de Rio, Rio de Janiero (2014), Material at Koenig Gallery, Berlin (2015), Ground Control at the Bass Museum, Miami (2017) and The Domestic Plane: New Perspectives on Tabletop Art Objects at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield (2018), among others.
