Hans Alf Gallery is pleased to present Carolyn, a solo exhibition by Adam Parker Smith. This exhibition marks the artist’s third solo with the gallery.
Featuring eight new sculptures: six striking electric blue female figures in various dynamic poses, accompanied by two miniature pool floats, this exhibition revisits the iconic inflatable, balloon-like forms that formed the artist’s early career, following a deep exploration into the enigmatic universe of marble in more recent works.
This exhibition, named after the artist’s partner, is an exuberant celebration of the female figure. Caught in classical poses and gestures - we recognize them from antiquity, athletics and fashion magazines - the monochrome urethane-aluminum sculptures merge the ephemeral nature of inflatable objects with the refined, enduring essence of classical sculpture, creating a compelling dialogue between form, time, and material.
“Six figures, all the same woman. Carolyn - multiplied, suspended, frozen in mid-motion like a reel of film stuck between frames. The blue swallows her whole, turning her into an apparition, a perfect silhouette. She is ancient and voluminous, weightless, stretched like Mylar - holding poses that could have been stolen from a Greek frieze or an 80s workout tape. She twists, she lounges, she strikes a pose as if caught in mid-motion and left there, trapped in a moment that never resolves.
Carolyn is six versions of the same woman - six echoes of the same body, the same presence, repeating in electric blue. They are all Carolyn. But in repetition, she becomes something else - no longer a single person, but a refracted image, a figure multiplied until the original starts to blur. The blue erases and preserves, flattening her into something between a memory and an icon. Matisse cut his blue women from paper, Yves Klein pressed his onto canvas - Carolyn is molded, sealed, held in place in poses that feel both ancient and strangely familiar, like a Jazzercise class staged in a marble temple.
This series is about her. About watching someone move, about studying them so closely that they fracture into versions of themselves. It’s about love, but also about distance - about the space between the real and the reflection, the body and the sculpture, the living and the image left behind.
The figures exist in a space between presence and absence, gesture and ghost. They are Carolyn, but they are also echoes - reflections warped by time and material. They could be her, or just the memory of her, flickering in and out of focus like a projection in a darkened room.”
- Adam Parker Smith (New York, 2025)
Adam Parker Smith (born 1978) lives and works in New York. He holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art in Pennsylvania. His work has been presented widely at national and international institutions, most recently at San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, California; The Brooklyn Museum, New York, US and The Times Museum, China.
"Carolyn" opens on Friday March 28 and will be on view through Saturday April 26.
