Artists Interview: Adam Ring

Adam Ring is our featured artist for our July Digital Exhibition Program. Adam is a collage based artist whose practice is primarily based in Digital manipulation of images to express himself. We asked Adam some questions to help explain his practice and significant conceptual influences behind his work.

Looking through your artist statement, collage and photo manipulation are important to creating your work, what artist or movement inspired you to experiment with the style?

The technique of collage has been adapted and reinterpreted by almost every major style or movement throughout the 20th century (cubism, dada, surrealism, abstract expressionism, etc.), and I’ve been generally interested in experimenting with their different perspectives digitally and with contemporary hindsight. Some specific artists which have inspired me have been Robert Rauschenberg, Frida Kahlo, Keith Haring, Kurt Schwitters, Hildegard von Bingen, Hannah Höch, Max Ernst, Imp Queen, and the tattoo artist Doctor Woo. 

Where do you find your inspiration for each of your pieces?

I find inspiration in much of my past studies of art history, chemistry, astronomy, and applied mathematics. This is often combined with my passion for queer activism, social justice, and mental health awareness to generate each of my works. 

Your artwork tends to have a sense of shape or movement to them, have you ever considered re-creating your artwork through sculpture or another medium such as print? 

I’ve explored creating prints of my work, but I have enjoyed the immense accessibility inherent to publishing my work online. Continuing with a digital medium, I have considered utilizing animation to explicitly depict the motion I imagine in much of my work: much like the swirling of cream as you pour it into a cup of coffee.  

For lots of artists, Art is a way of expressing emotions. In your piece ‘Specter Field’ you describe feelings of anxiety and frustration, do you feel that by creating these works you feel more inclined to open up about your mental health to others?

I would say that the inclination to open up was present, but the words to describe or explain what I was feeling would often escape me. Creating art has given me a language to represent latent emotions to others and has allowed me to better understand it myself.

How do you as an artist stay in touch with your local arts community?

I unfortunately tend to remain pretty isolated from my local arts community. As someone with no formal artistic training and a natural tendency towards introversion, I have not developed a personal network with local artists, but I enjoy regularly viewing the work of local artists, graffiti artists, and muralists in the Wynwood art district of Miami, Florida.

If money and time were no object what would be your dream project to create?

I would really enjoy putting together an interactive exhibition which combines performances, installations, music, and films to tell a cohesive “story” as the individual traverses through it. The story would have a surrealist sense to it and would aim to allow the individual to confront the physical nature of our reality (from a quantum to macrocosmic scale), our responses to this reality (cognitively and emotionally), and our interactions with this reality going forward. It would likely lean more towards theater than a traditional exhibition and even have some characteristics of an “escape room” where the individual would have to do certain tasks or solve certain puzzles to continue. Overall, the experience would aim to be as raw and unfiltered as possible in every aspect from horror to beauty.