Adam Handler: Rebel Rebel

Madelyn Jordon Fine Art is pleased to announce REBEL REBEL a first solo exhibition of new works by New York artist, Adam Handler. This exhibition will run from April 28 - June 10, 2017, with an opening reception on Friday, April 28, 2017 from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. The public is welcome.

This exhibition will debut a new body of work primarily comprised of Handler's "Girl" and "Tulip" paintings, recurrent and favorite themes for the artist. These works continue to deal with the female archetype, and issues of identity, and depict an international set of characters, from Moroccan Girl to Milano Girl. The women, standing erect and aloof amid a highly ornamental background, sport voluptuous bodies with large breasts, wide mouths, exploding eyes, and big, stiff hair. Handler's unexpressive, non-recognizable women are flat and stylized, depicting a rag-doll, cartoony visage. Doing away with perspective and proportion, he opts for bold, loud colors and exaggerated forms, embellished with repeated patterns of colorful floral adornments and geometric configurations that reach out to the edge of the canvas and impart a "personality" to each girl.

Handler's iconoclastic paintings are informed by an array of art historical and cultural influences, from Medieval and Renaissance art, Folk and Outsider art, and artists such as De Kooning, Basquiat and others. His canvases are vigorously painted with frenetic, thick jagged brush strokes, giving his work a hurried, improvisational style. Engaging and anarchistic in its simplicity, Handler's art is a unique balance of reverence and esteem for traditional art forms and his need to create an authentic, singular mode of artistic expression.

Included in this exhibition are a group of Tulip paintings, distilled in subtle hues of brown, grey and black. The tulips, presented singly, in pairs, or groups, sway left or right. The simply drawn flowers are contained within a halo-like aureole of moody coloring that emphasize the sharp contours and geometry of each petal, a nod to religious iconography found in Byzantine and Medieval art. The layered background of the canvases are heavily marked and scratched through Handler’s use of oil stick and acrylic. The universal image of the tulip is transformed by Handler’s unique artistic vision.

Adam D. Handler was born in 1986 in Queens, NY and grew up on Long Island. Handler received a BA in Art History from Purchase College, SUNY, in 2008, and is a graduate student in Art History at City College of New York. Handler studied Life Drawing in Italy, craft design with Jorge Nieves, and photography with Debra Mesa-Pelly. Notable recent exhibitions have been at Fred Torres Gallery, NY; Vered Gallery, East Hampton, NY; and The Children's Museum of Westchester, Rye, NY.