Paradiso: Adam Stoner Opening Reception

The  images in this body of work have grown out of a fascination with  architecture’s penchant to imitate and reinforce our deepest origin  stories. One part the book of Genesis and one part Italo Calvino’s  Invisible Cities, paradiso is an exhibition filled with walled gardens,  obsessive miniatures, and cities etched in stone. Drawing on the empty  architecture of the Romanesque and the barren cityscapes of Giorgio de  Chirico, these places speak a wordless language of entrances and exits,  alleyways and courtyards. This exhibition is also the premiere of new sand animations. In this  type of stop motion video, a camera is suspended over a light table  while the artist uses their fingers, brushes, or knives to sculpt a  drawing in layers of sand. Once the drawing is satisfactory, it can be  manipulated repeatedly to create a sequence; and with each successive  photograph, the medium appears to move and breathe.

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Adam  Stoner (b. 1989) received his Master of Fine Arts in Intermedia Studies  from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee in 2019, and his BA in  Studio Art and Theater from Williams College in 2011. Stoner makes  paintings, drawings, and video installations that visualize the intimate  connections between architecture and our memories. How are we mutually  inhabited by the very places we inhabit? If we build structures, do they  also build us? Stoner is the recipient of UWM’s Chancellor’s Graduate  Student Award, Layton Fellowship, and Williams College’s Gilbert W.  Gabriel Prize in Theater. Originally trained in scenic design, Adam’s  research frequently explores the language of space, the latent agency of  materials, and the architectures—visible or invisible— which resonate  endlessly in our daydreams. Adam lives and works in Milwaukee; he  teaches drawing at UWM’s Peck School of the Arts