He liked the idea that art could be an escape. Painting, he saw, could be a way of making decisions and breaking rules.

The Baltimore Sun

A variety of luminescent and textured paintings from Baltimore-based artist Seth Adelsberger demonstrates the artist’s innovative approaches to painting over the past five years.

In intense blues and saturated magentas, he creates his Submersion Paintings by staining untreated canvases with rich washes of acrylic paint before applying a thick layer of gesso. In his hands, this viscous white paint is unorthodoxly sandwiched in between the initial stained layers and a final wash of color, adding texture and dynamic form.

In his Border Paintings, the artist treats a painting’s surface as material to be cut away, leaving only a painted and wrapped edge to frame the void where one would expect to find the most important part of a picture. In other pieces, carpet fragments enhanced with images digitally manipulated replace paint and canvas as the media from which a ‘painting’ is made.

Adelsberger (American, born 1979) is the co-Founding Director of Nudashank Gallery, which has exhibited work by emerging artists, many from Baltimore’s vibrant arts community. His own work has been featured in group and solo exhibitions across the country. In 2008, he received the top award for painting from the Maryland State Arts Council. He received his BSA in Fine Arts from Towson University in 2002, and is a native of Emmitsburg, Maryland.

Read the exhibition brochure (pdf)

The exhibition is organized by Curator of Contemporary Art Kristen Hileman.