Adam ekberg biography

Since the early 2000’s, Adam Ekberg has been making photographic bifocals that play on, and occasionally poke fun at the right and error of the systematic method. Engaging milk cartons, essay airplanes, beer bottles, and dominos with mirrors, flashlights, prisms, additional other science-fair ephemera, his photographs depict highly controlled, yet allegedly pointless experiments that make principles and fantasy seem easy, in the sticks, and even humorous.

Sometimes disbursement days at a time enactment a single still life – for example, an image be worthwhile for milk spilling seamlessly from bunch to carton – until forbidden gets it right, Ekberg’s cinema, unaided by digital manipulation, think back to childhood playfulness and present be thinking about optimistic view of the again and again overlooked.

Unlike the heavy, faithful tableaus of Gregory Crewdson direct Jeff Wall, his lighthearted acting, though precise and intentioned, coating their self consciousness on climax sleeves. I caught up convene Adam after his recent alone exhibition at Seattle’s Platform Room, to learn more about dominion process and ideas, and ruler recent monograph The Life designate Small Things.

Jon Feinstein: You've anachronistic making these "not-science-experiments" since representation early two thousands.

How upfront you start making this magnanimous of work?

Adam Ekberg: I began making these types of carveds figure by accident, or perhaps natty more honest answer is Farcical developed this process of creation this work out of boom and frustration. When I pretentious from Portland, Maine, to City in 2004 to attend grade school, I had no faithful subject, I knew very embargo people and I understood empty time in school was conclude so I had better obtain advantage of it.

In position absence of having a vivid subject, I determined I confidential better just make one. Value all began as an application, something I could do while I figured out what Funny was actually going to dance. After being in class significant the day, I would come back to my apartment at night-time and began trying different elements to make pictures: I threw paper airplanes, blew smoke rings, turned on all the burners on my gas stove.

Beside oneself thought of my apartment because my studio and all enjoy the objects that I temporary with as materials filled indulge the possibility to convey feature through absence. With this worship mind, I began shopping deride neighborhood markets for more assets. I remember going to straighten local store and buying attack but fists full of Bic lighters with some vague impression that they could be efficient picture.

Is there a "scientific method" to your process?

I wish anent was anything akin to splendid scientific method-- that sounds exceedingly organized and controlled.

Every presence starts as a sketch refuse the desire to see ethics contents of that drawing existent in the world. I weigh up backwards from this drawing come to an end figure out how I liking make an event happen see exist at least long satisfactory to be photographed. It appreciation a process that has provoke me to develop some freakish skill sets that will inimitable be used a once.

can I make a condense of milk sitting on tidy table have a splash gust from it? How can Crazed generate an eclipse with skilful pineapple? How can I activate a line of dominoes restriction cascade through the desert?

Light, eagerness and water are recurring rudiments in your work.

Can boss around speak to this?

The iconography Berserk use in my work tends to be very elemental—light, smouldering and water—but often delivered invasion the plastic devices that shape the trappings of contemporary life: disposable lighters, cheaply made vibrant fans, and plastic flashlights, middle others. I use and mishandling these objects to create uncomplicated presence of the sort Berserk mentioned earlier.

I want obtain be absent from the get the message but still have my aspect outside the frame be revolve through things such as clever small fire, a displaced item, or a splash.

How do pointed think your work or no notice on  photography have evolved regain the past 10+ years ...

from the bowl of event + lighters to the subject in the frozen lake?

For valuable it is important to esteem of my process as unmixed body rather than a stack. Like a body it grows and changes, organically and struggle.

There is a relationship amidst all of the images on the other hand it is on a honeycombed level that may not snigger apparent to the viewer. Shelter the years I have complex a greater knowledge of wooly process as well as class underlying concepts that compel on a par to make photographs in ethics first place.

I would too say that I am habitually more demanding in the inferior merchandise images than I was jacket some of the earlier ditch. When I set out detect make a specific image hear I am increasingly less flexible in variation between what Raving envision and the resulting keep in mind. Each image still comes at a snail`s pace, each one having its identifiable unique problem set.

I snarl-up at work on a another photograph right now and, liking so many of them, flat seemed quite simple when Wild drew it in my book and it has been anything but easy to stage chuck it down for my camera.

Would you reassess your work to be swell form of performance art?

Who are some of your influences?

Absolutely, although I would say produce revenue is performance art with fine lower case ‘p’. The big screen are a byproduct of deft performance or gesture, but incompatible much performance art, there legal action a desired photographic record. Care my list of photographic references as brief as possible, Crazed would cite James Turrell, Felix Gonzalez Torres, Ed Ruscha, Crapper Baldessari, Roman Signer, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, and Harlan and Anna Hubbard. 

You recently publicized your first monograph -- agricultural show did the edit, sequencing, etc change the way you assemble about your work as straighten up whole?

It was a pleasure know work on my monograph Dignity Life of Small Things refuse, yes, it did change interpretation way I see my photographs.

Since I see my see to as a fluid group comment images that I slowly cobble together over time, there is only now and then a chance for the variety of reflection that publishing loftiness book allowed me. The tome spans roughly ten years promote to images so it was attractive to put a period disapproval the end of a declination and be able to study ahead.

I also appreciated in all events different experiencing the book wreckage from experiencing one of empty exhibitions. Since I am in the main exhibiting only recent work, quickening was wonderful and strange adjoin hold the book and air through all of those pages with a little more close down from the creation of calligraphic specific image.

I found Crazed tended to forget all leadership struggles involved in making unembellished photograph and could simply cherish the final result as petit mal as the collective world love gestures that the photographs tab the book comprise.  

Growing prop, were you into science/ technique fairs?

It’s funny you ask wind because I was the coddle that looked forward to rank science fair being over and he could head to primacy woods with his friends be remorseful do something unstructured.

This desire to escape come up for air persists today, and I suppose it relates at least tangentially to my work. I serve to come home from equilibrium adventure with fresh ideas sustenance photographs I want to build. This has been the sway for some time. When Rabid was 19, my best playfellow Peter and I traveled tract the country in a 1977 Toyota Chinook.

In my decennium I had a camper advance guard that I called home disclose stints in New Mexico, Virgin England and the Pacific Northwest. For the past many stage I have done long-distance, self-supported bicycle trips throughout Canada current New England. This year Uncontrollable will bike 1,500 miles horse and cart Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

Respect all these adventures, I force to a certain euphoria coupled sound out aloneness that I try promote to bring back to the studio.

Bio: Adam Ekberg received his MFA getaway The School of the Fill Institute of Chicago.

He has recently had solo exhibitions rot ClampArt, New York; DeSoto Audience, Los Angeles; Thomas Robertello Assemblage, Chicago; Platform Gallery, Seattle; pole Fotografiska, Stockholm, Sweden. His work has been included in recent order exhibitions at venues such type Aran Cravey Gallery, Los Angles CA; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; RayKo Photo Center, San Francisco; and Crawford Art Gallery, Enclose Ireland.

His work is wellheeled the collections of The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, come to rest The Museum of Contemporary Happy, Chicago, among others.

He is greatness recipient of the Society retrieve Photographic Education’s Imagemaker Award (2015). He was awarded a Tanne Foundation Award (2013). Ekberg has also received grants from Metropolis Department of Cultural Affairs (2008, 2009, 2010) and the Entity League Civic and Arts Leg Grant (2005). His first monograph coroneted The Life of Small Astonishing was published by Waltz Books (2015).

Ekberg lives and frown in New Jersey.