Adam Putnam: Deity

P·P·O·W is pleased to present Deity, Adam Putnam’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery, featuring an arrangement of sculptures and other improbable objects. Through an ongoing accumulation of imagery by means of photography, drawing, sculpture, film, installation, and performance, Putnam explores the shifting boundaries between architecture and nature, collective and individual experience, and the mundane and the transcendent.

For Putnam, meaningful connections exist in the space within and between, or as he puts it, “the format of the fragment.” These remnants, as opposed to being grouped in distinct bodies of work, are built up from one presentation to the next without end. Part of an ongoing mythology that has unfolded over the last three decades, Deity can be viewed as a sequel to Reclaimed Empire, an ongoing film project that began in 2008. Here, video fragments of landscapes and broken architectural models are replaced with discarded tree branches — dead, orphaned, broken, and washed ashore along coastlines from around the world — that are subsequently carved into the forms of human limbs. Swept together, a salvaged empire transforms into a reclaimed body. Unlike Putnam’s last solo exhibition, which featured a monumental tower, Deity invites viewers to look downward. Drawing on previous architectural visualizations, a mysterious octagonal reservoir of water sits at the center of a hexagonal tile floor made from earth surrounding the artist’s Maine studio. Referencing ancient Greek oracles, the water’s reflection projects enigmatic, vibrational imagery transmitted by the movement of people in the room, the building, and the city itself. Along with newly printed photographs and other small-scale structures, the fragments brought together in Deity act as a map, a snippet of a dream, and a glimpse into another reality.

Adam Putnam (b. 1973) has presented solo exhibitions at P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Kunstverein Munchen, Munich, Germany; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY; among others. His work has been featured in group exhibitions including Drawing 2020, Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY; Rockaway!, MoMA PS1, New York, NY; Paper, Artists Space, New York, NY; Whitney Biennial 2008, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Busan Biennale 2008, Busan, South Korea; 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia; and The Plain of Heaven, curated by Peter Eleey, Creative Time & The High Line, New York, NY. In 2007, he co-curated Blow Both of Us with Shannon Ebner at Participant Inc., NY and in 2009, he curated Everything Must Go, a solo exhibition of works by Martin Wong at P·P·O·W. Works by Putnam belong to the permanent collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, FL; Perez Art Museum, Miami, FL; and the Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania, Australia; among others. In 2024, his work was featured in P·P·O·W’s group exhibition Airhead. Putnam’s work was recently featured in Voice of Space: UFOs and Paranormal Phenomena at The Drawing Center, New York NY, and Tarot!: Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY.