JoAnne Artman Gallery is pleased to present The Gaze, an exhibition of portraits by Martin Adalian. Referring to the concept of gaze within the confines of visual culture, the title and selected paintings explore how an audience perceives art’s depicted figures. Examining different strategies of the gaze, Adalian implicates the viewer by placing them in the position of both the observer and the observed. Mediating between the sense of invasion and invitation, viewers are coerced into different ways of seeing when they are confronted with direct gazes and personal spaces.
Mining art history, popular culture, and contemporary aesthetics of mixed media and grunge, Martin Adalian creates intense, palpable portraits that shift the gaze with charged relationships between sitter, artist, and the onlooker. Portraying voyeuristic perspectives and mutual exchanges, his compositional subtlety chronicles the nuance of looking.
