Marina Adams

Born in Orange, New Jersey, 1960; Lives and works in New York, New York and Parma, Italy

I still think about how Cézanne finds an edge, what that is, and how we see. That’s something that enters into my work: how we see, how we experience. That comes back to a kind of being, to the physicality of painting—and also to the understanding that art is about being lived with. — Marina Adams, 2019

Artwork

Exhibitions

09.13–10.25.2023
In the Garden of My Memory
Longlati Foundation

Marina Adams

05.02–07.18.2021
Group Show
Parrish Art Museum

Affinities of Abstraction

11.06.2020–10.10.2021
Focus: Marina Adams
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Marina Adams

07.22–08.31.2020
2020
Online

Marina Adams

05.03–06.22.2019
Anemones
Salon 94 Bowery

Marina Adams

06.23–08.11.2017
Aspects of Abstraction
Lisson Gallery

Marina Adams

01.13–02.22.2017
Soft Power
Salon 94 Bowery

Marina Adams

06.19–09.18.2016
Making & Unmaking
Camden Arts Centre

Marina Adams

Biography

Portrait of Marina Adams by Grace Roselli

Marina Adams’ (b. 1960) paintings display the artist’s deft use of palette. Fluently pushing color into form, Adams creates undulating, interlocking shapes that reveal a powerful internal rhythm beneath their surface simplicity. As the artist puts it, “Meaning and intellect in abstract art can be difficult to locate, as there is no narrative to lead us into it. It is like the voice itself. I use pattern and color to create the voice. And I use structure and form to channel it.”

The artist’s vibrant compositions use saturated shades and sensual shapes to pack a graphic punch. While purely abstract, the works’ organic, free-flowing patterns are redolent of landscapes or bodies. Unlike many contemporary artists, who deliberately blur the line between figuration and abstraction, Adams’ current work is unabashedly—and exuberantly—abstract, allowing the artist to play with sheer color, form and pattern. Her work bears a Matisse-like connection to the intricate patterns of textiles; there is also a resonance with the rich designs of Moroccan rugs—and for that matter, those by Sonia Delaunay. Another inspiration for the artist has been Moorish mosaics, such as the magnificent tessellated walls in the Alhambra palace in Granada.

Adams has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including In the Garden of My Memory, Longlati Foundation, Shanghai (CN) in 2023; and FOCUS: Marina Adams, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (TX) in 2020.

The artist’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York (NY); the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (TX); the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (NY); and the Longlati Foundation, Shanghai (CN).

CV

Press

09.01.2019
Marina Adams | Salon 94 Bowery
Barry Schwabsky

Artforum

05.01.2019
Marina Adams with Alex Bacon
Alex Bacon

Brooklyn Rail

01.22.2017
Progress Report: Marina Adams’s Recent Paintings and Gouaches
John Yau

Hyperallergic

01.20.2017
Marina Adams’s Radical “Soft Power” Elle Décor (PDF in folder)
Katy Donoghue

Whitewall

01.13.2017
Marina Adams
Unknown

The New Yorker