News

Holly Johnson Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of “Up to…half,” an exhibition of new ink drawings by John Adelman. An opening reception for the artist will be held on Saturday evening, January 10, from 5:00-8:00 p.m. The exhibition continues through Saturday, March 14, 2009.

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). The dictionary was the primary source involved in the creation of his work for the past four years. The last definition written from that dictionary was ‘half’. Thus the exhibition’s title, Up to…half. He has since acquired a new dictionary and has started over from the beginning.

His new drawings continue to follow the traditions of rule-based art and utilize one or more systems that ultimately direct the creation of the work. These rule-based systems are combined with his obsessive mark-making and can be derived from mathematics, logic, and/or personal and consequential rules that he sets for himself. These processes allow the artist’s hand to show through and result in works that are completely unpredictable.

In 2007 Charles Dee Mitchell expressed “…take the artist at his word when he says that within each work, he follows the logic of his rules through to the end. The results can be beautifully wrought surfaces covered in tiny script that is illegible but leaves a compelling trace of human activity.”

John Adelman has been included in many noteworthy exhibitions such as: The Drawing Room, The Galveston Art Center, Galveston, Texas (2008); the BIG Show and Drawing In Space, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, Texas (2008); Works on Paper, Mills Pond House Gallery, St. James, New York (2006), Juror: Colta Ives, Curator Department of Prints/Drawing, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Directions, Barrett Art Center, Poughkeepsie, New York (2005), Juror: Steven Evans, Assistant Director DIA Art Foundation, Beacon, New York; and Amarillo Biennial: 600 Drawing, Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, Texas (2005), Juror: James Elaine, Curator UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California. He received a B.F.A. in Drawing, Painting, and Printmaking from The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio (1992) and received a M.F.A. in Drawing and Painting from the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas (2006). The artist currently resides in Houston, Texas.