2006
During its heyday in the 1960’s and 70’s, Motown Records was known as a “hit factory.” It’s difficult to imagine anyone who can’t recognize the songs and the sound of Motown. Propulsive, sparkling, spotlessly arranged, and refined without sacrificing grit or flow—their aural character is of a piece.
Motown founder Berry Gordy consciously took the principles of mass production (gleaned from working on the Lincoln-Mercury assembly line) and brought them to the music business. But to overstate the record label’s reliance on formula would diminish the distinctive stamp that a musician can put on a song. Individuals as diverse and quirky as Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and Martha Reeves were vital in augmenting and, in an odd way, strengthening the strictures of the factory.
These considerations came to mind as I mulled over the process-oriented paintings of Shane McAdams, currently on display at Denise Bibro Fine Art in Chelsea. Mr. McAdams’ abstractions may not be Top 40 material, but they’re remarkably consistent in character and quality; there’s not a bum picture in the bunch. Mr. McAdams is a one-man hit factory.
The Motown analogy hits a snag in terms of mood. Mr. McAdams doesn’t wear his soul on his sleeve; the paintings are, in fact, cool and impersonal. Anonymity is the goal. The (somewhat clunky) title of the exhibition, Unmoved Mover, indicates as much: It suggests detachment, and it places the work at a remove from artistic motivation, or at least the temperament that guides it.
Mr. McAdams fashions distinctive images, but his paintings are inherently hands-off. Typically, each canvas is an open-ended accumulation of organic phenomena. Opalescent and atmospheric drips, blips, bubbles and splatters separate, coalesce and expand over the canvas. There’s no “touch” to the paintings; Mr. McAdams doesn’t have one—at least not in the way that, say, Philip Guston has a touch. Mr. McAdams may well consider the notion antiquated or a cliché. He strives to avoid an overt indication of the hand. With their elusive and seductive range of pictorial incident, the viewer is left to puzzle over the painter’s methods. The “how’d he do it?” factor is high.
How he does it is through the resistance that can occur between disparate materials. Call it the oil-and-water school of picture-making. Employing various substances—oils, acrylics and ink, to name just a few—Mr. McAdams exploits their innate material components and adds additional ingredients to upset the balance. Layers of paint pull away from each other, forming rivulets of color and texture. The pictures thrive on incompatibility, paying tribute to process and paint. The science that goes into their making is most evident in the dense, sometimes crystalline surfaces that result.