EXHIBITION // ADAM EKBERG - MINOR SPECTACLES // CLAMP // NEW YORK

© New York, Clamp, Adam Ekberg

Adam Ekberg - Minor Spectacles - 09 Nov. to 23 Dec. 2023

Clamp
247 West 29th Street, Ground Floor
New York, NY 10001, USA

https://clampart.com

CLAMP is pleased to present Minor Spectacles, a solo exhibition of photographs by Adam Ekberg, which originated at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, where it was on display from January – September 2023.

Ekberg builds constructions and executes experiments in front of the camera lens. These fabricated subjects are ephemeral and result in an event which ultimately exists only as a photograph.

Ekberg’s interventions vary in complexity from a single pumpkin bouncing off a trampoline to a concoction with a milk jug, bucket, cocktail umbrella, and lighter referencing a Rube Goldberg machine.

As a whole, this collection of images speaks to a simultaneously playful but also lonely practice. These constructions exist only for the artist and the camera in the moment. The hand of the constructor is never explicitly shown, as if these occurrences miraculously came to be in a landscape devoid of humanity.

Despite Ekberg’s sometimes elaborate constructions, the images maintain a humble quality, one enhanced by his use of mundane objects and materials. This transparency in process and production allows the viewer to unpack each image on equal footing with the artist and to share in the artist’s poetic visual associations.

Ekberg’s most recent solo shows was at the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York. Other solo exhibition venues include CLAMP, New York City; De Soto Gallery, Los Angeles; Platform Gallery, Seattle; Thomas Robertello Gallery, Chicago; and Fotografiska Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden. He has been featured in group exhibitions in major cities such as San Francisco, Portland, Kansas City, and Cork, Ireland.

Ekberg has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, Monson Arts, Playa, and Monhegan. He is the recipient of the Society for Photographic Education’s Imagemaker Award and the Tanne Foundation Award. His monograph The Life of Small Things was published in 2015.

His work is in the collections of the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Museum of Contemporary Art, both in Chicago.

Ekberg earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and lives in western New Jersey.