About

 

Image Credit: Joe Goldberg

About Adam Disbrow ||

Adam Disbrow or AD_AD is a US based Contemporary Artist. His debut exhibition took place in July 2014 at Alexander Salazar Fine Art in San Diego, California. In 2014 he co-founded SPAC Gallery, an artist cooperative south of Washington, D.C. Since then his paintings have been shown internationally and he has placed hundreds of works in collections around the world.

About the Art ||

My work is a commentary on history and culture. I am interested in relationships of opposition — specifically life and death and the sacred and profane. Duality, dichotomy, and reversal are common themes I employ in my art.

I think art is a mirror that reflects who we are by what we see in it and how it makes us feel. Art can reveal the unseen elements that define us individually. By working in layers with varying colors, sheens, textures, and symbols, my paintings create a free space for the mind and eye to express itself honestly.

 
 

SYMBOLISM FOUND IN WORK

 

Single Square with Line Through - A building block of creation, a fractal, or a quanta. Examples being a photon, electron, or more conceptually, the soul.

Gold Square - Open to interpretation; acts as a content generator; representative of the both sacred and profane.

Silver - Genuine Silver Leaf tarnishes and oxidizes— its use is purposeful and representative of the ephemerality of physical art as counterposed with digital art which is unchanging.

Barbed Wire - Symbolizes how consiousness is caged inside the body.

Crosses - Represent the greek muses devoted to dialect and language — sometimes shown in sets of 4 which symbolize the four muses devoted to the arts.

Wagging Tongue (Tongue on a String) - Represents the conversational aspect of the natural world.

The Crown - Symbolizes Legacy.

Forks and Spoons - Mined from the evolution of expressionist symbols used by Edvard Munch and Jasper Johns, the forks and spoons in Disbrow’s work represent tactile sensation, pleasure, taste, sex and fertility.

Gold Single Square with Line Through - The quanta of consciousness or the soul.

Multiple Squares with Line through - Indicates how consciousness is tied to reality through perspective.

Three Jagged Lines - Represents an electromagnetic field.

The Heart - Symbolizes human life, death, mortality, immortality, and organic form. The red heart represents mortality, the white heart represents immortality, the black heart represents death.

The Bare Breast - Symbolizes sexuality, lust, desire, and sensationalism.

Binary Sequence - References created reality.

Cogs of Creation - Three circles which are turning and represent a form of the trinity: Mind, Body, Soul - Father, Son, Holy Spirit - Metaphysical, Physical and Celestial.

Equation of Creation - One over Ten or Ten over One Equaling Eleven — the binary code of created reality.

Fountain of Creation - Represents the spiraling gyre of the cosmos.