ADAM EKBERG: THE OTHER SIDE OF BOREDOM

For artist Adam Ekberg, moving past boredom means finding a space in which the mind is free to devise a logic of its own, and ordinary objects are liberated from the drudgery of daily life. The resulting photographic interventions are both mysterious and delightful. Cocktail umbrellas no longer shade tropical beverages but rather occupy a sunny beach en masse. Roller skates once relegated to an indoor rink now drag-race across an empty field propelled by burning aerosol cans.

Each of these photographs begins as a sketch drawn in a studio/barn in western New Jersey. As Ekberg realizes his staged happenings, the sketches pinned to the barn walls are removed and replaced with small finished photographs—constituting a small victory. His constructions, made entirely in camera without the aid of Photoshop, are not easily decoded or resolved. Ekberg’s translation of boredom reveals the poignant beauty that can take shape, however fleetingly, when the glint of possibility leaps out from the mundane.

This was a photography exhibition in partnership with the Aurora Photo Center at our Tube Factory art space Jeremy D. Efroymson Gallery.