The Secret Staircase: Charles Burchfield, Joy Feasley, Johanna Jackson, Chris Johanson, Paul Swenbeck and Agatha Wojciechowsky
July 15–August 27, 2016
Adams and Ollman is pleased to announce The Secret Staircase, a group exhibition featuring artists who explore–across media, intention and time–the spirit and the supernatural. Guided intuitively, the artists sense forces which cannot be quantified or known and through their work make manifest the unseen, the spiritual and the visionary. Their individual responses, made with paint, clay, text, exist as secret collaborators and resonate equally with both the believer and the skeptic.
The exhibition takes its name from The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel about a New England family and their ancestral home in Salem, Massachusetts which contains a mysterious staircase. In the context of this exhibition, the staircase serves symbolically to move one to another plane of existence. It provides the way to journey between the familiar and the unknown, tapping into a world filled with mysteries, obscure knowledge and arcane belief systems.
A small group of pencil drawings by Charles Burchfieldcontain whirling forms and organic shapes and patterns that capture the feeling and energy of an animistic landscape. Burchfield's work, as it seeks insight and knowledge from the natural world, provides a modern update to the spiritualism of 19th Century transcendentalists.
Agatha Wojciechowskywas wellknown in 1950s Surrealist circles as a medium and healer. The works on view in the exhibition are by her hand, but not of her volition, instead created by channeling the energy of the spirit world.
Alongside drawings by Charles Burchfield and Agatha Wojciechoswky are works by Paul Swenbeck, Joy Feasley, Johanna Jackson and Chris Johanson. These contemporary artists, while having divergent points of reference–from Shaker spirit drawings to science fiction to roadside shrines in India–have a very personal vantage point and iconography. Also indebted to the rich history of art, including the allegorical works of Caspar David Friedrich and the mystical paintings of Hilma Af Klint, the artists are deeply invested in a highly abstract symbolism where an interest in image intersects with formal concerns and material play in a deeply satisfying way.
Paul Swenbeck creates ceramics that are intuitive and direct, inspired by mandrake plants, alien sea creatures, natural rock formations, folk traditions and material culture. For The Secret Staircase, Swenbeck exhibits new sculptures made from terracotta that read as portals to other realms. Two shallow bowls mounted on the wall contain a watery mirror. Other works refer to icons that are destroyed in the process of worship.
Similarly, the surface of Joy Feasley’spaintings can serve as a place of perception or revelation. With their reflective surfaces on which to gaze, her paintings allow the viewer a place to divine shapes, patterns and images, and go beyond the conscious mind. These works are akin to witches’ scrying, an ancient tradition that used clouds, reflections on the water, a mirror or flame to receive messages and information.
Johanna Jackson’scarved tablets contain dream narratives that the artist transcribes in a state between sleep and awake. The forces of the mind are brought forward from twilight and captured as a concrete experience, just before they escape forever.
The paintings and sculptures of Chris Johanson,often made with an astute economy of marks and gestures from discarded materials, explore the complexity of modern existence and as such, give form to life's energy and universals truths.
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
installation view: The Secret Staircase
Charles Burchfield
Untitled (doodle), c. 1960
pencil on paper
3 3/4 x 2 1/4 inches
CEB 01
Charles Burchfield
Untitled (doodle), c. 1960
pencil on paper
3 3/4 x 2 1/4 inches
CEB 03
Joy Feasley
88, 2016
flashe on panel
15 x 20 inches
JF 17
Agatha Wojciechowsky
Untitled, 1967
ink on paper
12 x 9 inches
AWOJ 501
Agatha Wojciechowsky
Untitled, n.d.
ink on paper
13 1/4 x 9 3/4 inches
AWOJ 536
Johanna Jackson
Call Me Back, 2016
watercolor and spray primer on aluminum
22 1/2 x 12 x 1 inches
JJAC 46
Chris Johanson
What part of infinity, 2016
wood, house paint and acrylic paint
11 5/8 x 13 x 1 inches
CJ-P16-01
Chris Johanson
Time, The Self, A Beating Heart, 2016
wood, coat hanger, house paint and acrylic paint
16 1/2 x 18 x 15 inches
CJ-S16-01
Paul Swenbeck
Philemon, 2016
earthenware
6 x 15 x 9 inches as installed
PSW 321
Paul Swenbeck
Magnesor, 2016
earthenware
12 x 12 x 16 inches as installed
PSW 322
Paul Swenbeck
Connesor’s Mirror, 2016
earthenware
18 1/2 x 17 1/2 x 6 inches
PSW 323