Adam Dant at Almine Rech - Paris - Brief Article - Critical Essay

Adam Dant gained recognition on the London art scene for Donald Parsnips' Daily Journal, an illustrated art newspaper with cultural commentary that he produced and distributed from 1995 to 2000. In this show, Dant, who relates his work to the graphic and socio-satirical tradition of Hogarth, offered a mordant overview of modern society through drawings that are by turns apocalyptic and humorous.

Dant's new works deploy geometric arrangements of vignetted india-ink drawings that from afar resemble molecular diagrams. The compositions, mostly measuring 4 by 8 feet, sometimes include as many as 50 small black-and-white images that draw from a range of stylistic sources, including old-fashioned comic books, Flemish landscapes and medieval illuminated manuscripts. Encapsulated within circles (which evoke magnifying lenses) and connected by linear stems, the individual drawings present chaotic scenes that collectively suggest abstruse narratives that can be read in multiple directions across the works' surfaces.

Often, Dant focuses on moments when routine is disrupted by freak accidents, environmental disasters or acts of violence. The settings include public, living and working spaces, frequently filled with swarms of people shoving, colliding, biting, slipping or being wounded by errant debris. Voyeuristic views of activities in apartment and office buildings imply domestic abuse, adulterous affairs, satanic rituals, suicide and criminal action. These are interspersed with absurd acts such as someone parachuting alongside a building or a monkey (a sort of demonic version of Curious George) hurling computer terminals. Dant's vision of a base, unreflective society is best conveyed in Where We Go When We Die (2001). The drawing's horizontal rows of large concentric images offer versions of paradise that include a hillside orgy punctuated by people reclining on crosses, the site of a plane crash where partially clad survivors are happily conversing on their retrieved suitcases against a background of smoking debris, a train station with people lolling around in head-to-toe bunny outfits and a mirrored room filled with naked narcissists gazing at themselves in hand mirrors.

Dant's densely drawn images are always tinged with moral and political implications. Ultimately, the stark contrast between the emotional content of the vignettes and their systematic placement portrays a world caught between restraint and release, with no hope of any redemptive awareness.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group