Adam Fuss b. 1961

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

Acquired by Margaret W. Weston from the above, 1998

A spore print is a unique object, and like much of Fuss's work, is created without a camera.  To make his spore prints, Fuss placed the caps of mushrooms face down on paper and covered them to preserve moisture underneath.  With the passing of time, the mushrooms dropped their spores, leaving impressions of the undersides of their caps.  In the case of the spore print offered here, many mushrooms were used, and the composition was covered with paper, strategically pierced to allow the flow of air to disrupt the placement of the spores in visually interesting ways.  The print has been sprayed by the artist with fixative to preserve the image.

In the text of Adam Fuss, Eugenia Parry describes an undercurrent of the artist's work which is perhaps most apparent in his spore prints:

'He sharpened a desire to discover the essence of natural forms by letting them write themselves. Like a film director, he learned he had only to provide his actors--swamp gas, birds, mushrooms--with circumstances to reveal the genius that was innately theirs' (p. 4).