Gallery Talk between Amei Wallach and Adam Straus

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Here We Are in Paradise: Paintings and Drawings by Adam Straus contrasts day-to-day life with the beauty of nature through a contemporary and environmental lens.

Straus is known for his landscape-based paintings, which have challenged the traditional concept of the genre. His depictions of nature are disrupted with layers of information including fragments of newspaper articles and suggestions of environmental issues such as dripping paint melting off the canvas. His concern for nature is contrasted with the day-to-day tediousness of mundane shopping lists, his ever-present humor, and the noise from the daily news. His work is inspired by a childhood in South Florida, surrounded by swamps and water, learning about the flora and fauna of the area, as well as a move to the East End of Long Island, where he has lived for 22 years.

“In the relatively short time of my childhood, Biscayne Bay and the surrounding habitats suffered great losses of life. DDT decimated the bird populations, while run-off from suburban neighborhoods drastically decreased the sea life in addition to harming the coral reefs. It was this experience, which has ended up fueling a great deal of the work that I have made as an artist.”

Straus’s great concern about environmental issues has inspired his use of an app called glitch. He sends a landscape painting through this app partially breaking up the image in a myriad of ways. He then selects portions of these patterns to use in his paintings in a process of creation and destruction resulting in a metaphor for the human treatment of the natural world.

About Adam Straus:

Work by Adam Straus is in numerous museum collections including the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY; List Visual Center, M.I.T., Cambridge, MA; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; The Art Museum at F.I.U., Miami, FL; Mead Art Museum, Amherst, MA; Tufts University Art Gallery, Somerville, MA; William College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA; Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA; Heckscher Museum of Art, Hunting- ton, NY; and the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN; among others.A monograph on the work of Adam Straus was published by Gli Ori, Italy, in 2016. The book includes text by Adam Straus, edited with an essay by filmmaker and art critic Amei Wal- lach. Straus writes about childhood experiences, unusual moments with collectors, and how a move to the North Fork of Long Island from Brooklyn in 2003 inspired many of his works. Born in Miami in 1956, Straus lives and works in Riverhead, NY.

About Amei Wallach:

Amei Wallach’s latest documentary, Taking Venice, debuted in New York and Los Angeles in May, 2024, and at the North Fork Arts Center and, as a collaboration between The Church and Sag Harbor Cinema last summer. The film uncovers the story behind rumors that the U.S. Government and a team of high-placed insiders rigged the 1964 Venice Biennale, so their chosen artist Robert Rauschenberg could win the Grand Prize. She was Chief Art Critic for Newsday from 1984-1995 and an on-air arts essayist for what is now known as PBS NewsHour during much of that time. As an art critic, Wallach's articles have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Art in America, ARTnews, Aperture, Parkett, and The Brooklyn Rail. Wallach has interviewed and profiled artists Salvador Dalí, Jeff Koons, Willem de Kooning. As a filmmaker, Wallach co-directed and co-produced the documentary portrait Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress, and the Tangerine with Marion Cajori in 2008 and directed Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here, exploring the history of the artists, born in Ukraine under Joseph Stalin, who made the North Fork home for the last 30 years.

About East End Arts Council:

East End Arts & Humanities Council is a 501[c][3] nonprofit organization with the mission to unlock creativity and build community, uniting of the two forks. Since its inception in 1972, East End Arts has become a year-round hub for art and music enrichment and a showcase for artists who live, work, and visit the area with its school, gallery, and community development. The EEAC Art Gallery's exhibitions act as the catalyst for art collectors and enthusiasts to visit the growing Arts District of Riverhead to view relevant programs from established and emerging artists alike. The EEA Art & Music School provides private lessons and group classes for music, art, writing, performance, printmaking, All Abilities, and more. The EEAC Recording Studio produces ‘Matter of Spark: The East End Arts Podcast’ and services musicians, writers, and both emerging and commercial creators. For more information, email aW5mbyB8IGVhc3RlbmRhcnRzICEgb3Jn, call 631.727.0900, or visit eastendarts.org.

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