ADAM NORMANDIN Wanderlust
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Adam Normandin Wanderlust
Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com cover: 07 (detail), 2018 oil & acrylic on canvas, 72 x 45 in
Adam Normandin: Wanderlust In his immersive paintings, Adam Normandin communicates the immense power and mythic character of freight trains and railyards within the mode of hyperrealism. His exceptional painting ability gives off an impressive sense of verisimilitude, and each detail contributes to his canvases’ complex equations of symmetry, rhythm and motion. Capturing the charisma and dynamism of his subjects, Normandin’s art inspires our memory and imagination, releasing from the quotidian something fantastic. His hyperrealist approach conveys the vivid coloration of his railcars, even as they are embellished with rust, earth, and graffiti. While his art displays an astonishing level of technical ability, its lasting power may be found in the balance between his subjects’ prodigious physical power and these surprising, minute fragments of visual information that Normandin chooses not to edit out. By painting the train cars’ scars and blemishes, he uncovers a sense of poetry that permits his viewers to look and see in a new way. These details make his canvases feel both exceedingly real and highly activated with energy. “I seek to emphasize the beauty and relevance of unobserved details,” Normandin writes. “The ordinary can be significant, truthful, and soulful.” By painting these under-noticed and overlooked details, Normandin asks us to suspend what we think we know about a subject that may feel overly familiar to our cultural imagination. Instead he has chosen to paint trains as they inhabit our world today, just as they are. The significance of trains and train travel in the building of America’s culture and infrastructure is all-encompassing, though they may today bring up associations with some distant era disconnected from the present. In our cultural imagination, trains have become symbolic organisms, serving as conduits between the past and present, the urban and the rural, the machine and the human. They may be said to connect with something foundational about the American dream, or with the myth of the great American frontier. For the last two centuries, they have allowed travelers to venture beyond what is local and familiar out into the unknown. To many, trains provided a means of escape for those searching for a better life in a faraway place. For others, trains might suggest the particular feeling of romance evoked only by traveling long distances. Normandin takes it a step further: “Freight 2
trains are intriguing to me because they are travelers, relentlessly moving from one place to the next, year after year.” In his art, he encourages his viewers to examine even more closely the conceptual associations we have with trains by showing us how they inhabit and perhaps serve to represent our contemporary world. He does so with abundant style. His colors are bright and vivid, and his trains seem to glimmer under the light of the sun. He paints some of his trains in motion – speeding from one side of the painting through to the other, moving so fast that they seem to dissolve in space. Even the trains that are motionless are anything but inert: the implication of motion and energy is charged into every stroke of the artist’s brush. His fondness for closely cropping his subjects—or presenting them straight on—simplifies our view of space and rewards us for noticing the rhythms in the rail car’s design. If the rectangular patterns of raised metal stimulate a feeling of visual rhythm, then the sunlight makes polyrhythms out of the cascading shadows across them. When combined with his saturated palette, Normandin’s taste for these unusual composition techniques lends his canvases a highly contemporary formal sensibility. Normandin’s attention to the semiotics of logos, printed numeric codes, and graffiti tags adds yet another layer to this rhythm. These details also offer up generous layers of association. While the first instance of street art and graffiti is up for debate, the specific practice of “tagging” train cars dates back to the 19th century as industrialization reshaped the country. In those days, migrant workers would paint what were known as “monikers” on the sides of railcars, communicating news, sharing stories, or perhaps to simply make their mark across long distances. “The railyard companies spend millions on the removal and prevention of this graffiti, but still, it remains an undeniable part of modern railroading, not to mention the streets of my community,” Normandin writes. “I remain compelled as ever to include this detail in the overall narrative of my work.” The loose, stylized graffiti tags appear alongside numeric codes, which remind us of these trains’ dual function as both objects of popular culture and machinery of important commercial utility. This provocative juxtaposition seems to indicate a delight by the 3
artist in conveying divergent—though complementary—visual signals that connect with our memory and imagination. Though the human figure doesn’t make any overt appearance in his art, he imbues his trains with such personality that the paintings have the overall effect of portraiture. Normandin’s trains are machines, indeed, but in his art, they become the figure. Like us, they have aged, weathered the elements, and changed as they have made passage through the world; they know just as well as Tennessee Williams that time is the longest distance between two places. Normandin, having relocated across the country from New York to Los Angeles for his art career, knows all too well the courage and aspiration required to embark on a new chapter in life so many miles away. His home and studio in Los Angeles are today located in close proximity to several train yards, and the tracks wind through the landscape of his neighborhood. Spending ample time wandering the railyards for inspiration, especially at early hours of the morning, Normandin finds it imperative that his paintings retain a feeling of objectivity. A salient voice in contemporary American realist painting, Normandin’s work is exhibited in top galleries and museums across the country. Normandin is bold enough to record the true accumulations and losses that time and distance bring. When coupled with the implicit--and often literal--depictions of motion and passage, his art makes reference to what has brought each of us to into the present, and emboldens us to consider where we might go next. “If something mundane and functional can communicate such richness and complexity,” Normandin writes, “then perhaps we can find meaning within the most ordinary aspects of our own lives as well.” In his art, Normandin clarifies the enduring existence of trains as worthy of our consideration. He addresses our collective sense of history by awakening a feeling of nostalgia—but bringing it further into focus and into the present. As that great Faulkner quote goes, “The past is never dead; it’s not even past.” If beauty that is real – and which cannot be manufactured - comes from the accumulation of time, wisdom, and experience, Normandin reminds us where we can find it. 4
Whispers from the Past, 2020 oil & acrylic on canvas, 60 x 45 in
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Against the Grain, 2010, oil & acrylic on panel, 24 x 45 in
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Stay the Course, 2018, oil & acrylic on panel, 16 x 20 in
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Lesson Plan, 2016, oil & acrylic on panel, 30 x 45 in
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Closing In, 2014 oil & acrylic on panel, 28 x 72 in
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Change of Plan, 2014 oil & acrylic on panel, 20 x 60 in
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Alliance, 2017 oil & acrylic on canvas, 26 x 84 in
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At the Helm, 2010, oil & acrylic on panel, 16 x 20 in
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The Long Haul, 2010 oil & acrylic on panel, 16" x 16"
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Pack, 2017 oil & acrylic on canvas, 34 x 72 in
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Bloom, 2020 oil & acrylic on canvas, 50 x 60 in
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2 Far, 2020 oil & acrylic on panel, 40 x 30 in
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Through the Cracks, 2012 oil & acrylic on panel, 22 x 38 in
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Adam Normandin
b. 1965, New York
EDUCATION 1987 Bachelor of Arts, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2020 Wanderlust, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 2018 Small Works, Bernaducci Gallery, New York, NY 2017 New Paintings, Bernarducci Meisel Gallery, New York, NY 2014 Yard, Bernarducci Meisel Gallery, New York, NY 2011 Still/Motion, George Billis Gallery, New York, NY 2010 Crossing Paths, Evan Lurie Gallery, Carmel, IN Path, George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2009 George Billis Gallery, New York, NY 2008 George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2007 Freight, Gallery 33 East, Long Beach, CA 2005 Between the Lines, Metro Gallery, Pasadena, CA SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2019 Willott Gallery, Palm Desert, CA 2018 Galerie de Bellefeuille, Montreal, Canada New Precisionism, Bernarducci Gallery, New York, NY 2017 Photorealism in the Desert, Imago Galleries, Palm Desert, CA 2016 Photorealist, Urban Landscapes: A Historical Overview, Bernarducci Meisel Gallery, New York, NY
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2015 2012 2011 2010 2008 2007 2006 2000
Group Exhibition, Bernarducci Meisel Gallery, New York, NY (also 2014, 2013, and 2012) Beyond Realism, Galerie de Bellefeuille, Montreal, QC Space/Form, Breeze Block Gallery, Portland, OR City Scape II, George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Hyperrealism, Mark Gallery, Englewood, NJ A Rolling Stone, Porter Contemporary, New York, NY Principal Gallery, Alexandria, VA George Billis Gallery, New York, NY George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (also 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007) Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA George Billis Gallery, New York, NY Adam Normandin and Steve Frenkle, Finer Things Gallery, Nashville, TN Ruby Green Gallery, Nashville, TN The Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA Gallery 825, Los Angeles, CA Finer Things Gallery, Nashville, TN (also 2005, 2004, 2003, and 2002) ART 2000: Applauding Revolutionary Talent, Millard Sheets Gallery, Pomona, CA
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Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com Š 2020 LewAllen Contemporary, LLC 24 Artwork Š Adam Normandin