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Mac Adams, Gone from my sight

Exposition personnelle
Mac Adams
gb agency, Paris
25 Janvier - 22 Février 2020


Gone from my sight est un hommage à la photographie: une photographie qui témoigne de la complexité et de la fragilité de la nature humaine; une photographie qui décode et rend intelligible la réalité mais aussi qui a le pouvoir de créer de la fiction et susciter du désir ; une photographie vivante et subjective, spectatrice du passage du temps vers l’oubli, mais aussi objective, indice précieux d’une énigme; une photographie qui dénonce les injustices sociales, rend compte et éveille les consciences mais aussi qui, malgré elle, produit un système d’exclusion et de phobies.
Gone from my sight rend compte de la richesse du travail de Mac Adams: de ses premières recherches avec la série des Mysteries, diptyques noir et blanc des années 70, oeuvre centrale de l’histoire de la photographie narrative, à son installation Cartography of a Crime dans laquelle l’association de plus de 2000 images d’archives recrée un paysage cognitif et social; des premières expérimentations entre sculpture et photographie avec les Fragments de 1981, récits fictionnels ou éléments de preuve, jusqu’à la dernière série d’images intitulée Liminal Body qui dessine les contours d’un état entre deux, où l’image s’efface avant de renaitre. Enfin la dernière installation, conçue en 1981 et réalisée pour la première fois aujourd’hui, The Last Waltz, crée par l’association d’un texte et de musique, offre une expérience à la fois temporelle, sensorielle et spatiale.

Mac Adams, Sliding into Pink

Four color inkjet photographs on archival paper, glass, wood

From the series Gone from my sight / The Liminal Body
Glass 135,5 x 45,5 cm
Shelf 45,5 x 13 x 13 cm
Edition of 3 (+ 1 A.P.)

Photo Aurélein Mole

Mac Adams, Partial view of exhibition ‘Gone from my Sight’, 2020

gb agency, Paris, 2020
Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, Partial view of exhibition ‘Gone from my Sight’, 2020

gb agency, Paris, 2020
Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, Black Leather, 2019

Seven inkjet color photographs on archival paper, glass and wood

From series Gone from my Sight / The Liminal Body
Glass 68 x 198 cm
Shelf 172 x 13 x 13 cm
Edition of 3 (+ 1 A.P.)

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, Mutilated Photograph, 2019

Quatre photographies jet d’encre couleur sur papier archives, verre, bois

From the series Gone from my sight / The Liminal Body
Glass 63 x 107 cm
Shelf 81,5 x 13 x 13 cm
Edition of 3 (+ 1 A.P.)

Mac Adams, Gone from my Sight

Four color inkjet photographs on archival paper, glass, wood

From the series Gone from my sight / The Liminal Body
Glass 124,5 x 147 cm
Shelf 47 x 13 x 13 cm
Edition of 3 (+ 1 A.P.)

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, Candy, 1981

Piece of plinth, wood, glass, glitter, black and white photograph

From the series Mystery Fragments
Photo 18 x 13 cm
Fragment 24,5 x 47,5 x 6,4 cm
Unique

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, Greta, 1981

Wood, fragment of tiles, powder, cigarette, hair, black and white photograph

From the series Mystery Fragments
Photo 18 x 13 cm
Fragment 30,5 x 39 x 4,8 cm
Unique

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, Julia, 1981

Fragments of wooden pallet, black carpet, hair, shards of glass, black and white photography

From the series Mystery Fragments
Photo 18 x 13 cm
Fragment 24 x 26 x 5 cm
Unique

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, Study for Still Life with Mozart Konzert für Flöte und Orchestra n°16, 1981

Pencil on paper

99,5 x 70 cm, framed 107 x 78 x 2,2 cm
Signed and dated
Unique

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, Mystery,The Whisper, 1976-1977

Diptych, black and white photography, silver print

From the Mysteries series
93 x 102 cm each, framed 79 x 104 x 2.5 cm each
Edition of 3 (+ 1 A.P.)

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, Scarfs

Three black and white vintage photographs on cardboard, silver gelatin

Vintage
104 x 78,5 x 3 cm framed
Signed and dated
Unique

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams
Partial view of exhibition ‘Gone from my Sight’, 2020

gb agency, Paris, 2020
Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams
Partial view of exhibition ‘Gone from my Sight’, 2018

gb agency, Paris, 2020
Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams
Partial view of exhibition ‘Gone from my Sight’, 2020

gb agency, Paris, 2020
Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, Cartography of a Crime, 2018

Installation

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, Cartography of a Crime (detail), 2018
Installation

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, Cartography of a Crime (detail), 2018
Installation

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, Cartography of a Crime (detail), 2018

Installation
Unique

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, Cartography of a Crime, 2018

Installation
Unique

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, The Last waltz, 1981-2020

Installation

Record player, vinyl record with three waltzes by Chopin, newsclip from 1981
Dimensions variables
Unique

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, The Last waltz, 1981-2020

Installation

Record player, vinyl record with three waltzes by Chopin, newsclip from 1981
Dimensions variables
Unique

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams, The Last waltz, 1981-2020

Installation

Record player, vinyl record with three waltzes by Chopin, newsclip from 1981
Variable dimensions
Unique

Photo Aurélien Mole

Mac Adams
Untitled, 1981-2020

Installation

Record player, vinyl record with three waltzes by Chopin, newsclip from 1981
Variable dimensions
Unique

Photo Aurélien Mole

Gone from my sight reflects upon the richness of Mac Adams’ work: from his first explorations in the Mysteries series, black and white diptychs from the 70s — works that are central in the history of narrative photography — to his installation Cartography of a Crime in which the association of more than 2000 archive images recreate a cognitive and social landscape; from the first experiments between sculpture and photography with Fragmented Mystery (1981), fictional stories or evidence, to the last series of images called The Liminal Body which draw the contours of a state between two states, where the image fades before being reborn. Finally, the last installation, created in 1981 and produced for the first time in this exhibition, The Last Waltz, created by combining text and music, offers an experience that is temporal, sensory and spatial.

Gone from my sight testifes to a work that never stops but, on the contrary, continuously invents and questions the different thresholds, between mediums, moments and realities.The exhibition is a more existential homage to photography because it reveals the dazzle of life; by grasping the moment, it attests that its subject was alive and suggests that it is already gone.

Fragment of an interview with Mac Adams conducted by curator Luiz Gustavo Carvalho:

lgc: Throughout your works we are enticed into trying to construct a narrative out of what we see. However, in your last works this narrative wins a very singular poetic aspect. What is the importance of the narrative void in the series The Liminal Body?

ma: As I discussed earlier, the narrative void comes from film and the splicing effect. The Liminal Body comes from the Latin word limin, meaning threshold, it pertains to the in-between states, it can become a place, a time, a situation, a being. It’s a middle ground where transformations take place, transformations that can be filled with contradictions and ambiguities. In the works Black Leather and The Red Dress we see images of a beautiful young woman transforming into a criminal because society refuses to recognize transgender. The gray color which is the center of the transition conceptually contains both images. In Gone from my sight we see the viewpoint of someone in a hospital bed looking at a beautiful view transforming into the monochromatic color green, the color of regeneration.We experience these liminal states continuously without recognizing them conceptually, the threshold between remembering and forgetting. Rage and love, the hand and the body; as in Touch.

lgc: Through the density of your last works, The Liminal Body, the construction of a narrative gives place to a philosophical reflection about the ephemeral nature of memory.The body crystalizes the possibility of transcending a certain time and space…

ma: I would say the work Mutilation addresses this. The picture is of a young boy standing on a rock looking at an older man, presumably his father. The top half of the man has been cut out rather crudely. A vintage picture, taken around the 1930s/40s. This picture really resonated with me on a personal level as I have never seen an image of my grandfather because my grandmother extracted him from the few pictures that existed. This is a picture one could write a thesis about. Showing it to a few people, I have had wildly speculative motives and genders as to who and why did this. I think one reading clear, it’s love transformed into hate and unforgiving. The young child has lovingly been untouched, in my mind it was done by a woman, possibly the mother and wife of the man.This is the ability of photography to be a muted witness moving through the liminal threshold to the forgotten.