ANGEL J. ADAMS
Hinweis: Die deutsche Übersetzung dieses Textes liegt noch nicht vor. Dies ist der Originaltext in amerikanischem Englisch.
I portray, in my art, the power of imagination in a world of dreams and
illusion. With various types of visual art, I intend to represent what
I encounter, as well as present to my audience an interpretation of our
surroundings. I have chosen perception as my focus. Certain friends of
mine who have acted as teachers, along with a series of mystical and
psychedelic experiences, have influenced my awareness and, in turn, my
art. Visual and Conceptual artists, such as the Dadaists,
Situationists, Surrealists, and Impressionists have urged me to
question reality. Writers, television shows, films, and even types of
music that deal with science fiction, paranormal phenomena, and fantasy
have shaped my style.
I take in the knowledge of the East: the peacefulness and mysticism of
Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, and The Bahá’í Faith, and the West: the
perspectives and disciplines of the Hopi, Navajo, Toltec, and Yaqui
peoples. I am greatly inspired by the anthropologist, writer, and
sorcerer Carlos Castaneda, his cohorts, and especially his teacher, don
Juan Matus. Don Juan frequently stressed, "Human beings are
extraordinary beings living in an extraordinary world... Neither should
ever be taken for granted." My work is a method of meditation and
self-reflection on this idea.
On my quest for enlightenment, I explore "the unknown." I use the
mediums of glass sculpture, digital video and photography, because of
their malleability, which is also a characteristic of perception. I
create illusions in video by manipulating scene combination, visual
layers, implied space, light, shadow, context, and sound. In digital
photography, I blend, change, and enhance images of actual objects or
environments. With these techniques, I can remind the viewer that
things are not always what they seem. I believe that the trickery of
such technology has begun to awaken us to this fact.
The subject matter of my work often includes aspects of dreaming,
extra-terrestrials, angelic entities, daily sacredness, perception of
light, energy, color, movement, time, and space. I portray spontaneous,
intuitive, and magical accidents with natural, figurative, and abstract
forms. I observe and gather data, documenting and representing the
worlds in which I find myself. At the same time, I aim to give the
impression that this "physical" world, like my art, is illusionary.
My current video project, _Yin AND Yang_, examines gender roles by
presenting appropriated digital video footage of television, film, and
music stars. I arranged clips of switched or obscured gender appearance
and behavior with clips of the American/Hollywood masculine and
feminine stereotypes. My intention is two-fold. First, I want to
present to the viewer a series of clips where the sex of the person
changes gradually from recognizable to unrecognizable, and back, in
order to show the natural unpredictability of human personae. Second, I
chose this theme because I am extremely intrigued and attracted to
androgyny and gender-blending individuals. This is not a question of
homosexuality versus heterosexuality. Those labels are inconsequential.
I believe that mysterious or otherwise "unconventional" appearances
reflect the scientific fact that none of us are only one sex each.
Therefore, taking on one lifelong binary tag in society is absurd. Each
human is both female and male power, estrogen and testosterone, yin and
yang, to varying degrees, at different times, by the year, day, or
minute.