Adam Sipe: Ring Wren & Turtle | LAMAR DODD SCHOOL OF ART

"I like titles that are commands. I like the alliteration," explains New York-based artist Adam Sipe when describing the title of this exhibition, Wren Ring & Turtle. "I'd been playing around with the words 'ring' and 'wren', they're right next to each other, almost the same word. And 'turtle' is just some more bumps in the road. It's a command and it's a mumble. Say it fast and and it barely comes out of your mouth."

Adam Sipe's series of small paintings on display at the Dodd Galleries work in a similar way, both a mumble and a command. Sipe works quickly and intuitively, a continual negotiation between marks on the canvas. What emerges from this call and response are swift meditations on color, space, and line. Abstract and vaguely figurative, the paintings engage with a lineage of modernist painting recalling late Picassos and Morandi's still lifes. "If I don’t say it's a face it’s a vase," Sipe writes. "Or tree. Sunset Burger. Profile beehive. "

Adam Sipe was born in Greensburg. PA. He studied painting at Penn State University, Temple Rome, and the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College. He has exhibited at the Ulrich Museum of Art, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon, and the 1926 Gallery in Chicago. Sipe lives and works in New York City. He didn't study experimental electronics or rug design but he screws around with those things anyway.