Adrian Fortuin – This Bird Has Flown

In This Bird Has Flown, Adrian Fortuin presents a new collection of unique prints made using a combination of experimental and traditional darkroom techniques. From silver gelatin prints created from photographic negatives, to chemigrams made with the assistance of an inkjet printer, these works draw on the relationship between the physical world  – that which we perceive as the raw material of the photographic image – and the physical processes that are used to create images in the darkroom. The universe of the photograph is the starting point for this exhibition, and the fundamental vulnerability, fragility and contingency of the images that result from darkroom developing techniques become a metaphoric ground for a meditation on memory. 

In Fortuin’s words, “The photographs seem to enhance or change my memory of a moment. I vaguely remember taking the photograph but when I print it, it seems to take on another feeling or even place. I question the accuracy and validity of my memory. But the feeling of the image is more real when it is printed as opposed to when the photograph was taken. … The process is almost like remembering, where the actual event and my feeling of it shifts slightly the more I think about it or bring it to light.”

This exploration of photography and the darkroom is related to Fortuin’s broader interest in the relationship between abstract and pictorial forms. His wide-ranging artistic influences include Tracey Rose, Moshekwa Langa, Wolfgang Tillmans and Daisuke Yokota, and he is equally at home painting large scale canvases as he is working on miniature-scale darkroom prints. His diverse practice is unified by a commitment to conceptual integrity, and it is this that informs his ventures into different media. 

Adrian Fortuin (b. 1994, Johannesburg) is a Johannesburg-based artist whose work explores the relationship between intuition, intersubjectivity, identity, image-making and abstraction. Working in a range of media, the scope of which is informed by a primarily conceptual approach, Fortuin is interested in the limits of representation and the legacies of identity and experience connected to family, ancestry, community, and society more broadly. His work is strongly informed by the emancipatory potential of abstraction in varying degrees.

Fortuin graduated from the Wits School of Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 2020, and was the recipient of the Wits Young Artist Award and the Martienssen Prize in 2019. Since graduating, his practice has shifted from a performative and lens-based approach to a transmedia engagement with painting and drawing. His paintings are characterised by an obsessive process of revision, in which paintings are sedimented under newer paintings, so that the painted surface becomes an archive of thought and gestures and a metaphor for the endurance of personal historical traces in the present. He has exhibited his work in group exhibitions in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Kampala, and the roaming African platform Boda Boda Lounge. He has recently completed a residency at the David Krut Print Workshop in Johannesburg, and is currently engaged in a residency at The Joining Room, also in Johannesburg. This is his first solo project.

Join us for the Opening Night of This Bird Has Flown on the 21st of April from 6 – 8:30 pm at Artist Admin on Roeland Street, Gardens, Cape Town.

RSVP on Facebook or LinkedIn.

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More on Adrian Fortuin and FORMS Gallery

@_adrian.fortuin
www.forms.gallery

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Opening Night

Thursday, 21 April 2022

18h00 – 20h30

COVID restrictions in place

Duration

21 April – 6 May  2022

10h00 – 16h00

Mondays – Fridays