Adam de Boer

Overview
Adam de Boer

“With images informed by a Western childhood and education, I misappropriate and mutate craft traditions outside their prescribed abstract designs into hybrid forms.” - Adam de Boer

Adam de Boer has a unique and multi-layered approach to image-making that sees him harmoniously blend modes of abstraction, representation and figuration in pieces that speak to timeless themes of travel, cultural-heritage, interpersonal-relationships and individual identity.
 
His work is imbued with a narrative sensibility, offering hints at stories shared between the landscape and the figures immersed within it. Often rendered in a tropical, dreamlike palette, his paintings are created through a considered process of layering various materials, processes and conceptual themes; each begins as a batik, a traditional wax-resist dyeing process the artist studied while travelling in Java, investigating his own Eurasian heritage. Once the wax and dye are boiled out of the surface, the resulting field of geometric abstraction serves as the ground for multiple layers of oil paint and details of silver-leaf. Occasionally the canvases are ornamented with intricate hand-carved teak wood embellishments, an art form also endemic to Indonesia.
 
The visual and material influence of Javanese craft and culture are central to the artist’s work and spring forth from his hybrid identity as a Dutch-Indonesian-American. The Javanese craft traditions de Boer draws upon are transformed beyond their traditional boundaries as they combine with western imagery and oil painting styles, ultimately crystallising into an investigation of postcolonial identity.
Biography
Adam de Boer

Adam de Boer (b.1983, USA) is an artist currently based in Los Angeles, USA. He graduated with a BA in Painting from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2006 and an MA in Fine Art from the Chelsea College of Art, London in 2012. Recent exhibitions include Gajah Gallery, Jakarta and Singapore (2023, 2022); Ben Brown Fine Arts, London and Hong Kong (2022); Taymour Grahne Projects, London (2022); The Hole, New York and Los Angeles (2022, 2023); Hunter Shaw Fine Art, Los Angeles (2020/2018); World Trade Centre, Jakarta (2018); and Art|Jog, Yogyakarta (2018/2015).

De Boer is currently a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellow and in 2017 was awarded a Fulbright Research Fellowship to Java, Indonesia. Other grants include those from the University of the Arts, London + Arts for India, The Cultural Development Corporation, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and The Santa Barbara Arts Fund.

His work is held in multiple private and public collections including: Deji Art Museum, Nanjing, China; Bank of America, Jakarta, Indonesia; Glendale Community College; Chelsea College of Art and Design, London; Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC; Department of Human Services, Arlington, VA; DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Washington, DC and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Washington, DC.

Works