Justin Adian

I’d like to start our conversation by learning a bit more about the structure of your works, which are such a key element.

The paintings are made out of plywood with felt and canvas stretched over them. I used to use foam to make them very puffy, but the foam also made where they come together look a bit haphazard. With the felt blankets I get a tighter connection. The felt does still round the edges and give a bit of a puff keeping an organic feel.

I do not consider my work spiritual or mystical but do like vamping off of others. I like thinking of Joseph Beuys and his legacy. An artist who had little use for paintings but taught Palermo, Richter, and Knoebel. And the felt is a connection.

You had also mentioned in that interview that you sometimes compare/consider paintings akin to short stories (and specifically cite Hemingway and his Nick Adams stories) — can you expand on that idea a bit?

I think of the pieces touching and coming together in a narrative. The way some of the pieces come together relate to bodies. The narratives I think of are very short, more like a singular narrative moment. Like the moment two bodies decide to separate or an awkward aftermath. The Nick Adams stories appeal to me because they are the same character at different points in his life going through similar moments, the reader is familiar with the character just dropping in at a different moment.

There’s something in your titles (such as Wigglin’, Bubbles, and Key Party) that make me think of an artist like Piet Mondrian and his famous painting/title Broadway Boogie Woogie — as well as writers like Raymond Carver or Charles Bukowski... this idea of a very highbrow or intellectual artist/writer that draws inspiration and connection to what some might consider “lowbrow” or mainstream.

I sometimes think I understand the difference between high and low. But once I like something I do not stop liking it so its influence is always there. Comic books, minimalism, music, literature, design, sci-fi, Dungeons & Dragons, it’s all the same to me.