John Adelman

For most of his career, John Adelman has explored the material qualities of ink on paper, creating works of art that take on an incredible physical and visceral presence after successive layers of ink have been industriously applied. His compositions are strictly defined by a series of rules that the artist sets for himself. As others have noted, they follow – if a little peripherally - in the footsteps of minimalist and conceptual rule-based art that saw the likes of Sol LeWitt or Josef Albers, and a post-structural interest in art as text, rife with connotative value...

Adelman follows the tradition of rule-based art, with systems derived from mathematics, logic, personal, and/or consequential rules. So disciplined is this work that it could be mistaken as computer generated but don’t be fooled, this is where John Adelman’s brilliance lies.

John Adelman’s work continues to follow traditions of rule-based art, with systems derived from mathematics, logic, personal, and/or consequential rules set by the artist.

Adelman is an artist who plays by the rules. In September of 2008, Hurricane Ike devastated Galveston and Houston and ruined the artist’s dictionary (The Unabridged Encyclopedic Webster’s Dictionary of 1989).

John Adelman is an artist who plays by the rules. Of course, they are rules he sets for himself with each new work, and so they do not seem too onerous. And although they consistently produce elegant and engaging drawings, some of them seem a little odd.

Following traditions of rule-based art, the drawings of John Adelman contain a preordained conceptual methodology. Rules consisting of a single resource, a constant, and a variable provide a focused exploration of a singular mindset directing the work to its conclusion.