ADAM FUNG

Adam Fung received his MFA from University of Notre Dame and BFA from Western Washington University. He is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas.

In June 2016, Fung was an artist in residence as part of the Arctic Circle program. The summer solstice expedition traveled above 81 degrees latitude aboard a rigged sailing ship, using the port of Longyearbyen, Svalbard as a departure point. His recent bodies of work arise from this direct experience in the Arctic.

Fung works primarily as a Painter and has a dynamic range of research interests that touch upon issues such as climate change, landscape, patterns and the make-up of the universe. Fung’s work often arises from direct experience such a residency in Iceland or a 2014 road trip around west Texas and New Mexico to visit dark sky parks and observatories

Fung’s paintings can be found in public art collections at Microsoft, South Bend Museum of Art, TCU, and the US Department of Energy’s Fermilab, as well as numerous private collections nationally and internationally. Fung is represented by Fort Works Art, in Fort Worth, TX and Aron Packer Projects in Chicago, IL.

Artist Statement:

This series of paintings is executed with deliberate attention to surfaces, in paint application, in variety of linen textures, or the use of absorbent grounds. The imagery shifts across the Arctic sea and landscape employing a pale monochromatic palette that speaks to the light and disorientation of the Arctic summer’s endless day. Each image is rendered directly from photographs that I took during the residency in the high Arctic, including an image of the pack ice edge at 81 degrees north, about 500 miles from the north pole. These seas, glaciers, icebergs hover in a moment of static illusion that must be negotiated by the formal presence of an X. Each image presents a visual quandary for the viewer as the X reinforces the painted surface but its transparency allows the viewer to re-enter the painting as a window into another world. These landscapes no longer exist as depicted, having shifted in the duration a year of winter’s snow and summers melt. The larger question at hand is- in what form will these places exist, if at all, in the coming years, decades, or millenniums?

In addition to the 2017 paintings of the Arctic, I have created a new body of work depicting our attempts to depart our planet. I was struck by the February 2018 Space X launch of the most powerful rocket in history, the Falcon Heavy. Along with the promise of large, Mars-bound payloads this launch deposited more pollution into the atmosphere. How do we catalog these new advancements? With wonder – as two of the three rocket’s boosters simultaneously returned to land, upright on their respective landing pads? With trepidation- as the sight of the power to take us to new planets may suggest we need a backup plan to earth? These new paintings are a meditation a significant moment in human history while also a study in muted color, surface, and the power of images.

 These new paintings are positioned alongside Arctic sea and landscapes X’d out, and the uncommon, a film shot in the Arctic Circle with drones. Whether seen as advancements of technology, explorations of the unknown and known universe, potentially colonizing, or human ingenuity-  I believe these images further mire us firmly in the Anthropocene’s precarious future.