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John Adams Finding Zero at the Athenaeum

January 26, 2011 

   

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John Adams on opening day
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Twig Murray, Director of the Athenauem
John Adams’ show Finding Zero is up through the end of February at the Athenaeum in Alexandria and it’s an unusually synergistic fit between artwork and venue. The Athenaeum, located just a block from the main drag of historic Old Town, is over 150 years old, began life as a bank and has been through a whole lot of incarnations since, including a church and the headquarters of the U.S. Quartermaster during the time that Alexandria was occupied by Union forces in the Civil War. For almost the past 50 years , it has been the property of the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association.
    ImageThe light-filled, high-ceilinged austerity of the Athenaeum’s interior reminds me of a New England Congregational Church. John Adam’s serene and otherworldly paintings are perfectly at home on these walls. Using a limited palette of mostly black and grays, Adams uses a grid to anchor his repeated marks, providing a kind of armature for the build-up of the images. To me, they recall the sky as seen by a child lying on the grass, a lovely memory.
 
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