Born in Dallas in 1976 and now working in Los Angeles, artist Adam Janes is presenting a new series of sculptures and works on paper for his first solo showing at the gallery, «Candle Chantry (psycho killer qu’est-ce que c’est)».
The exhibition takes its title from Psycho Killer, the first hit by the American group Talking Heads. Explaining the genesis of the song, the group’s singer David Byrne has said, «I imagined Alice Cooper doing a Randy Newman type ballad.»
« Candle Chantry » is like the song’s unlikely fusion of sarcastic pop and esoteric heavy metal: spilling over with craft stuff, consumer products, cult objects, spirituality, triviality and magic. A colossal jumble of cigarette-filled ashtrays, dice, miniature skulls and even one of the artist’s teeth, the installation becomes an altar for specific prayers and Masses. This Chantry is the very image of the artist’s studio, turned into a candle factory for the preparation of the exhibition.
The project comes accompanied by works on paper: the three largest drawings work as a trilogy using the pentacle to explore the sacred, while the smallest ones recycle details from the runny sculptures or present strange self-portraits.
All this makes Adam Janes’s «Candle Chantry (what’s a psycho killer?)» a logical extension of the idiosyncratic formal impulses and psychedelic explosions first put on show in the gallery’s project room in 2007.