Desert (Loss) - Mixed Media Prints by Ren Adams, Exhibition Opening

First Friday, November 6, 2015 marked the artist reception and exhibition opening for Desert (Loss) - Mixed Media prints by Ren Adams.

Ren Adams produces richly layered hybrid and mixed media prints, often combining five or six different printmaking techniques, and rarely producing a work with fewer than four layers. Each piece in Desert (Loss) is composed of thin, abstracted and colorful layers of serigraphy, with Akua monotype and image transfer components.

Pieces installed for Ren Adams' exhibition

Ren says of the series:
"Desert (Loss) investigates the suspension between loss and distance, through the language of a fractured desert. These remixed landscapes imply the weirdness of the West; vastness and density become memories of memory, mutations of a white-hot encounter. Historian Simon Schama says “landscape is a work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock,” just as our own stories and memories are constructed of layered moments."

"Sylmar Suspension (in my nothing)," 2015.
Layered serigraphy, image transfer, monotype. Ren Adams. Sold. 

Ren remixes a haunting combination of Hollywood-infused desert moments. She says of these landscape 'memory strata'
"My strata are flattened, graphic layers, which suggest the way recollection develops a fictional sheen, with pinpoints of lucid detail; certain moments burn and remain. The play between flatness and depth asks what it means to inhabit the space between memory and experience, where fleeting exchanges flare and dissolve. My compressed imagery is remixed, just as we shuffle memories like tracks on a playlist—moments fade and recur. Some details get replayed."

"Mojave (always)," 2015. Ren Adams. Layered serigraphy and Akua monotype. 9 x 12".

During the opening, Ren also gave a demonstration on how she uses serigraphy to create these densely layered images. She showed various different photo screens, printing and also discussed the dynamic, responsive way that she creates overlaps and transparency. Watch for the video on our YouTube channel. Also, Ren teaches serigraphy workshops at New Grounds!

Ren Adams giving her serigraphy demo. Photo courtesy Michelle Marie Sharp. 

Ren also says about the pieces in this series:

"In processing a personal sense of dislocation and loss, I am drawn to the landscape of media and television—complex spaces I’ve inhabited in life and through the ambiguity of fact-fiction. Like memory, TV offers a dual sense of place, a spark of the ‘here’ and ‘elsewhere.’ Imagery inDesert (Loss) remixes my own media-infused artwork, drawing on television, personal photographs and even Google Street View to form a composite desert; a California-New Mexico-Hollywood of past and present."

You might be wondering why there are so few action shots from the evening! In addition to being our main workshop instructor here at New Grounds, she is also our press photographer and videographer, and was too busy running around! We'll add a few more installation and action shots before the show is over. 

More shots of the work in the exhibition:

"Inglewood (substance of now)," 2015. Ren Adams. Layered serigraphy and Akua Monotype. 9 x 12".

Ren Adams' vibrant, layered Serigraphs channel a technicolor Hollywood desert. Poetry is hidden in each piece, as well. 

"Foothill Freeway & Balboa (I see you in all things)," 2015. Ren Adams.
Layered serigraphy, image transfer, Akua monotype. 9 x 12".

"Vasquez Canyon Road (in this distance)," 2015. Ren Adams. 
Layered serigraphy, Akua monotype. 9 x 12".

Each piece grapples with the distance between loss and experience, memory and contact... set to a hybrid desert that combines California and New Mexico.