Danielle Adair

Danielle Adair
danielleadair.com
Statement

We use stories to understand each other. I am interested in the stories we tell ourselves and those that our culture generates. Do our cultural storylines (that of the artist or politician or schizophrenic, for instance) describe us or do we embody these roles because they have established storylines? Self-reflexivity, humor, and the ability to bring attention to the spaces we inhabit are important to me. In all the forms in which I experiment I aim to produce work that can initiate a story for both the passing and the seated reader. I am continually seeking that point at which both narrative and title collapse, the point at which meaning is both coming together and falling apart.

Video Installations
Painting
Events
Feedback

Well, I'll start. I like the banality of the images you have chosen, but I find myself, as I stand here reading the series, driven to construct an interlocking narrative and I become frustrated by this apparent pretense, because I feel it's a trick the scenes seem to engender.

Now I take this seeming ambiguity to be its central promise and a real strength in the presentation of the pieces as a-

Yes, but don't you think its lack of clarity highlights a certain authorship that is more scathing than profound?

I'd like to talk about the use of a flat monochrome and the iconic lines. I see these and I wonder about choice versus chance events. Is the intention behind the placement of these "fragments" - I'll just call them for the moment- in the hands of the viewer or already predisposed? Is there a dialog that we can enter with you, if the former?

I really enjoy this collection in view of your previous work, and I am wondering what brought you back to this medium when visually it expresses a broken narrative, a distrust of traditionalism despite being fully positioned in the genre of realism, and a very bleak minimalism to me. How apt is this form for your work?

 Additionally, how is this to be presented? Here, we take this presentation as is, unless you show us otherwise, and I find myself questioning its scale. On the technical end of things, however, I don't know how you are applying the script, but the work has a sleek design quality that, I think, successfully contributes to the underlying exegesis of disjointedness in the structure.

I want to go back to "Why this size?" and, also, I want to ask why there are this many "voices," should I say, in the work as a whole? I'd be curious to know how, contextually, you view this work.

Further, is too much being done for a work of this nature or do you believe this scale is appropriate? Personally, I'd like to see you do more, much more.

Given your more concise, edited approach in the experiential end of your earlier works, do you feel this mode provides you more potential for experimentation and growth due to its less articulated intent than your other stuff? Where do you see yourself going from here is, I guess, what I am asking?

And what are the aims of this work in terms of reach? Do you want the experience of each theme to be lasting or ephemeral with regards to the whole?

Lastly, and then we'll wrap up, I get the sense that everyone agrees these are not cohesive, would you attest to that? Why are you wanting to convey disorder if so? Is it through illustration or provocation in your mind?