Urban Transfer Global Narratives

(Editorial from Lic.Veronica Cuomo, Art Historian Curator, Zurich)

“The Space in which we move is full of photography that we never see.”

(Clive Scott)

Karl Adams (Armando Carlo Adamo b. 1965) presents his new solo show, Urban Transfer , Global Narratives, from Frebuary 3 to 12, 2022, in the Gallery am Lindenhof (Zurich). K.A achieved a Master in Professional Photography at the John Kaverdash Academy (Milan,Italy). Applied and attentive, he held meticulous photographic journals aiming to perfect and document his technique tirelessly. A chronicler of metropolitan spaces, K.A. has traveled the world documenting urban iconography through the lens of his legendary Leica. Recently two of his photographs received the Leica Master Shot mention by Leica online Photography International Magazine (LFI) due to their symmetrical composition and sharpness. This applies to the “Lunar Building” (Bangkok, Thailand 2019), where round windows pierce the White building’s surface, created an unexpected Dalmatian pattern. Electricity cables cross the image, disrupting the dots’ playful rhythm and pushing the power line to the foreground, splitting the photograph into four irregular quadrants . In this castellation, the wires’ transmission function became the protagonist of the narrative. K.A. fascination with urban architecture is recognizable in this work., echoing the historical romance between photography and architecture, retraceable to 1830, when the young medium’s long exposure times favored immobile objects.

The extraordinary high resolution and finesses of details in "Turbines” (Bangkok, Thailand 2019), a conglomerate of old discarded motors, recall the “99 Cent” (1999) from photographer Andreas Gursky (b.1955). A recurrent feature in both artists’ work is the deliberate lack of distinction between the image’s plan, thus inviting the viewer to elaborate on the visual information.

From an art-historical perspective, street photography has two essential hallmarks: First, it depicts all urban life predicaments as temporary; second, it facilitates “a sense of the instantaneous as the corridor into a certain kind of truth” (Clive Scott 2007).

The photographic moment rescues everyday life from ephemerality. According to linguist Clive Scott, instantaneousness I sa state of hypersensitive alertness, and it precisely, and it is this quality in K.A. street shot that we cherish most.(“Bus driver”, Murmansk, Russia 2019)

The eloquence of the photographer’s visual language features the city, a public stage, for intimate performance exposing global tales.

Lic.Veronica Cuomo (Art Historian Curator) - February 2022 - Zurich

02.02.2022 - 14.02.2022 Galerie am Lindenhof, Zürich, Switzerland

01.08.2022 - 15.08.2022 Leica Store, Genève, Switzerland