Self-destructive/ self-contradictory: ways to freedom

Adam de Neige´s archeology of the present examines the usual perception of seemingly everyday actions and items. His objects and visual material of different techniques aim to control the way we see them. In a kind of self-censorship, they reduce their color scheme or visual field – yet their protagonists to still lifes.

When representing more or less harmless situations, Adam de Neige uses fragmentarization, abstraction or absurdity in a minimalistic, unobtrusive way. They become the last mean of expression under more extreme (political) conditions. Destruction/ reconstruction of known forms can criticize the order of things, and abstraction was often seen as political weapon. The execution of power on individuals, after Foucault, is a continuing transformation from an objectification of the human being (from still life to its extreme form: public execution) – to a hidden one, where those who execute power are invisible.

Furthermore, destruction or sabotage of sensible/ understandable messages can be an individual´s ultimate way to retain control over its own identity. Which leads to the paradox of self-destruction as a way to freedom. In Adam de Neige´s paintings, the represented persons may be “doing nothing” or “nothing useful”, or there may even be “nothing to understand/ see at all”: This “Nothing” lies outside of any “order of things”. Adam de Neige experiments with the unseen: “Nothing” appears to us or happens. His dualism of “nothingness“ and hyperrealism plays with gaps in what we see, gaps in what we understand – Adam de Neige´s art plays with us.