Screened In - Adam Lesh @ Woodpecker's Muse

Adam Lesh’s Screened In at the Woodpecker’s Muse feels claustrophobic. His paintings, imagery mediated by and through screens, disorient and close in on the viewer. Fascinated by the way that many of the most “real” experiences are often perceived through screens, Lesh appropriates subjects from both virtual and physical screens – webcams, cell phones, twitter, windows, windshields etc. Portraits clearly painted from a digital source, people filtered through the sickly green and white light only a poor quality digital camera or cell phone camera could achieve, speak to the significant connections one can build and keep through an artificial screen while at once keeping the viewer/participant closed off from outside physical reality, or the inability to truly experience while “screened off.” It is hard to deny the lingering questions: how real can it be or feel through a screen? What is it like to live a life screened in?

The most interesting piece in the show, “T-Mobile Metanarrative”, is comprised of nine panels hung together as a whole, a grid. Clearly part of a cell phone camera aesthetic, the images are unclear, hurried and glimpsed, as if the camera was unexpectedly shifted away before the viewer had the chance to recognize what it is they are seeing. This effect of being cut off and disoriented is heightened by Lesh’s palette, one of acid colors that speak to digital reproduction and modern technology. Some panels are overlaid with literal mesh screens, creating a subtle pixelation effect and further connecting the oil paintings to the digital world. Lesh states that he “intends to tease apart possible meanings, to reorient these dizzying phenomena from the quick time of bits to the slow time of paint.” “T-Mobile Metanarrative” achieves this in the most tangible way by suggesting the little parts of ourselves we involve within this world, filtered through these strange screens, and the various degrees and ways we reach to understand the whole. Lesh's paintings seem to beg answer to the question of "what is it like to live screened in?" I can't help but think the answer is a life dizzy and unsettled, solitary as a result of being held, by your own doing, inside. 

Screened In runs from now until end of March.

Woodpecker's Muse Gallery hours:

Closed Sunday and Monday.
Open: Tuesday thru Friday : 11:00 to 6:00
Saturday: 1:00 to 5:00

The Woodpecker's Muse is located at 372 W. Broadway, Eugene, Oregon 97401