Hans Adler

press release: "T’ART | Arabesques of the Road" June 24 - July 28, Sunroom Café, 638 State St.

"This little exhibit displays 15 black-and-white photos of familiar shapes. The shapes are pre-determined by cracks in the surface of the road. The material of these shapes is bitumen, commonly subsumed under the term tar. The purpose is to seal the cracks. This practical purpose, however, has an aesthetic side effect. Here, the phrase “form follows function” finds its perfect realization. Liquid bitumen fills the fissures smoothly, and once solidified, it becomes form: elegant, beautiful, perplexing, playful, and sometimes mysterious, provoking amazement, imagination, and associations, all while being useful. Although these forms hide the original ‘scar’, at the same time they make it visible precisely through the act of veiling. But these forms do not ‘mean’ anything, they  are objects, not signs. Taking the forms out of context by zooming in on them opens up a playful aesthetic perspective, providing a mysterious pleasure for our eyes. By approaching these arabesques of the road in this way, photography offers a new mode of seeing, makes us more attentive, becomes T’ART."