David Adamo is an American artist (born 1979, Rochester, New York) who lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Primarily a sculptor, he engages with form and materiality, working with wood, plaster, bronze, and other materials to create installations that are both performative and formal in their arrangement.

A process of slow removal is central to Adamo’s sculpture. Objects from everyday life take on new forms, revealed by their remains: the fruit after it has been bitten, the balloon after the air has run out. The same is true of Adamo’s wood works—the eventual forms have emerged through the reduction of material.

For his fifth solo exhibition at Peter Freeman, Inc., a single unlaced shoe sits on steps leading nowhere and miniature doors set into the wall create entrances for small spaces in the installation. Adamo has peeled away the layers of 108 canes, chipping away until they are brittle and useless. The repetition of their spindly forms is offset by the pools of shavings the artist has left behind, exposing his progress in piles of negative material. A scenario is created in which the viewer feels they have just missed on out some action, trailing a sense of something unfinished…

His drawings are made ambidextrously, a practice which he relates to drumming. He describes working line by line, finding a rhythm and pace, and arriving naturally at a wave-like pattern.

David Adamo is on view at Peter Freeman, Inc., New York, through 22 July 2022.

Untitled (part V), 2020, Bic pen on paper, 88 5/8 x 74 3/4 inches (225.1 x 189.9 cm) Courtesy the artist and Peter Freeman, Inc. Photography by Nicholas Knight.

Untitled (cane), 2021-2022, ashwood, rubber, ashwood chips, 36 3/4 x 4 3/4 x 1 3/8 inches (93.3 x 12.1 x 3.5 cm) Courtesy the artist and Peter Freeman, Inc. Photography by Nicholas Knight.