Adam Hunter Caldwell, Coverage, Ryan Graff Contemporary
Adam Hunter Caldwell, Social Justice, Oil on Canvas, 18 x 20 inches & Social Justice Verso, Mixed Media on Canvas, 20 x 16 inches
Change in the House of Fascism
By Chris McCreary
It is the most basic of sympathies to dread the current political environment in America, whether through one's basic humanity, through one's own existentialist dread, or an amalgam of the many threats to love and life that so many now find so pervasive. Opening November 15, as a finger pointed directly into the chest of the Trump administration is Coverage, the first new works from San Francisco painter Adam Hunter Caldwell since his highly introspective show Imago at Heron Arts almost exactly one year ago.
Painter and teacher, dancer and martial artist, proud gay man, hilarious and defiant, and so much more: Caldwell is a Renaissance man for modern America. These qualities have defined his unique vision over his decades-long career, and his work among various queer, disabled, and social justice communities has given him eyes to see into the issues now at hand. Specifically, the show – consisting of one large triptych along with seven themed pairings of oil paintings with mixed-media works – examines eight terms recently removed from Federal government websites, and the chilling effect each deletion means.
Those terms bear repeating here and now: Belong. Disabilities. Social Justice. Ethnicity. Hate Speech. Climate Science. Fascism. Refugee.
Adam Hunter Caldwell, Refugee, Oil on Canvas, 24 x 20 inches & Refugee Verso, Mixed Media on Canvas, 20 x 16 inches
Caldwell's work is highly evocative, but usually for reasons one can't quite pin down. Traditionally, he's avoided direct messaging in favor of an almost stream-of-consciousness assemblage of images, ideas, and iconography. Much of his work is the kind where artistic intent is undeniable yet inscrutable, and to parse it as a viewer can be near impossible – it's the kind of work where what the individual takes from it is based less on the work itself but on their own experiences and unique points of view, filtered through his imagery.
Not so for the pieces in Coverage: these are blunt instruments. Most of the eight oil paintings are even labeled clearly and boldly with the banned word they represent, hammering home their messages.
"Ethnicity," for example, is a fantastical representation of modern-day enslavement: people of different colors and religions working at breaking their own chains, with others forced into slave labor, constructing Christian crosses: a piece that damns this government's hatred of the "other" and its catering to Christian Extremism while simultaneously repeating the centuries-old truth that in America, and now more than in recent memory, at least, one's physiognomy, faith, or melanin count is their own personal cross to bear.
Adam Hunter Caldwell, Ethnicity (Oil on Canvas, 22 x 30 inches) & Ethnicity Verso (Mixed Media on Canvas, 20 x 16 inches)
In lesser hands, many of the oil works could easily be trite or banal: for example, "Belong" depicts a worker in an ICE jacket literally whitewashing a toddler of color. But Adam renders it with such raw power, intuitive and evocative color theory, and judiciousness in detail – almost abstract toys and flowers flank the child, clashing against near-photorealism in the brush and worker – that during my time in the gallery, I observed that painting held more eyes and for more time than any other piece. "Heartbreaking," "evil," "it's just a child," I overheard viewers remarking, all with sadness and sincerity.
Adam Hunter Caldwell, Belong, Oil on Canvas, 22 x 30 inches
If the oil paintings are hammers, the accompanying "Verso" pieces are not tools at all, but Caldwell's personal diaries; they are a return to the sort of "classic" Caldwell style where paint, pencil, collage, and photography coalesce into a look into his heart and mind. When asked why they were called "Verso," a term traditionally used to refer to the back of a painting, he explains: "I have the oil painting version, and I almost recycled it into this other version, in a different medium, each is like an echo, so I called it "verso" because it's almost an explanation of what's on the front. I wanted to present the piece and also explain the piece.”
As such, the Verso pieces function in both liminal and subliminal spaces: much more than rough drafts or visual workshopping, the heightened detail and depth of thought and feeling reveal not just how Caldwell developed the oil paintings, but serve to educate the viewer on both the problems of current Federal policy and Caldwell's own deep thinking and personal motivations. Prior to discussing this with Adam, I assumed the Versos were illustrations of the possible fallout of their respective policies; of an ugly future we are making for ourselves. It was sobering to hear they are, instead, the already extant truths that inspired the moment in which we find ourselves, both in the gallery and in the country at large. They are not the back of a painting; they are the backgrounds of his thoughts and emotions that led to the oil painting's distilled and perfected state.
This allows Caldwell to speak on the issues at hand in much greater detail. For example, the oil painting "Climate Change" shows hazmat workers dealing with radioactivity in front of a White House beset by smokestacks and backed by the sort of red sky that too many of us, especially Californians as of late, recognize as indicative of unchecked fires not far away. It is not a subtle work by any means. Meanwhile, in "Climate Change Verso," we see a feminine beauty ripped in half; we see unreadable but formal cursive; we have a pencil illustration of some childlike endeavor that seems undeniably futile. Connections can easily be made to, respectively, our destruction of our Mother Earth, the unheralded dispatches of climate scientists and our too-few well-meaning politicians, and the insufficient efforts humanity has made to address the crisis: all of which will only get worse under the Trump administration and its intentionally blind eyes.
Adam Hunter Caldwell, Climate Change, Oil on Canvas, 18 x 24 inches & Climate Change
Verso Mixed Media on Canvas, 20 x 16 inches
Most evocative for this viewer on "Climate Change Verso" was a simple cutout comic book speech bubble applied to a hazmat worker, reading: "I'll be safe so long as I wear this uniform." That's an idea far bigger than its direct application, stretching beyond the nearly comedic lunacy of accepting that one needs a hazmat suit to survive given the theme of the show, those words "echo," as he says, into much larger ideas: from the befuddling presence of people of color serving as ICE goons, safe, they think, in their suits of power, all the way to the comfort of being white in America – the only truly "safe" suit under American politics and policies.
Much of this body of work was intensely personal for Caldwell. In "Disabilities" and "Disabilities Verso," he was able to use his own photography as reference material, having spent time in Los Angeles with, as he joyfully described it, "a sort of queer, disabled, everyone-welcome dance troupe." He pointed to an image of a woman in a wheelchair accompanied, if not comforted, by a man, explaining they were actual participants in the troupe, and he watched their experience evolve from hesitancy to joy, something in which he found great inspiration. These figures are presented almost identically on the oil painting and the Verso piece, though the pair of works display wildly different sides of the disabled experience. The oil painting speaks to the political side, with men in suits climbing stairs, utterly indifferent to the struggle before and ultimately behind them, as yet another government worker whitewashes the word off the canvas.
The Verso, however, illuminates the struggle of disabled life. We see a large male figure in a precarious position, its skeletal system not aligned with its body, and propped up by a large crutch: the man seems less a human than a marionette, puppeted through life by limitations not just of his body, but of the systems in place ostensibly designed to support him. As a disabled person myself, I reflected on the healthcare denied me by insurance companies, I thought of the endless delays I've experienced in receiving care, and I recognized that I felt less empowered by America's treatment of the disabled than I felt as if I had been dragged along at a pace defined by others' money and indifference: puppet indeed.
Adam Hunter Caldwell, Disabilities, Oil on Canvas, 24 x 18 inches & Disabilities Verso, Mixed Media on Canvas, 20 x 16 inches
The largest piece in the show, and the only one with no Verso accompaniment, is a 64 x 24-inch triptych addressing Fascism, "An End to All Tyrants." Centered in the piece is a defiant black man, flanked by men and women of all races and standing, with a speech bubble reading, "all it takes for tyranny to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent," a quote attributed to such various writers as Thomas Jefferson, John Stuart Mill, and Edmund Burke – the last one being almost ironic, as Burke has been described as the founder of modern Conservatism. We see more traditional Caldwell hallmarks in this piece – the pop-culture iconography of Woody Guthrie and his famous "this machine kills fascists" guitar, a man in a Yankees hat being restrained from a fight – or is he trying to escape, to retain his freedom? There are fighter jets above, rendered down to their most simple geometries, robotic authority figures behind, and a tortured spirit hovering above, all of which are far more figurative than the seven other oil paintings.
Adam Hunter Caldwell, An End to All Tyrants, Oil on Canvas triptych, total measurement 64 x 24 inches.
The posted artist statement reads, in part: "There is so much in this country I love. The land, its people. The ideas behind the Constitution. There is so much I hate. Racism, homophobia, colonialism, and now Fascism." True patriotism is a love of one's nation, but one directed at improving it, not blindly defending it. Via Coverage, Caldwell has displayed true patriotism: boldly and deeply asserting his love and expressing his rage.
Adam Caldwell’s limited-edition graphic novel for Coverage, a PDF of which can be downloaded here.
Coverage is on view through December 20 at Ryan Graff Contemporary, 804 Sutter St., San Francisco
