Adam Henry and Emily Mae Smith

Dio Horia, Mykonos

Acquired from the above in 2018 by the present owner

Birsfelden, SALTS, The Little Apocrypha, April – May 2017

Mykonos, Dio Horia, Dancing Goddesses, May - July 2018

Beneath the eerily hypnotic composition of The Explanation Replaced One Enigma by Another lies a conceptual framework that underpins the painting by Brooklyn-based artists, Adam Henry and Emily Mae Smith. This painting was part of a collaborative body of work inspired by the fictional “brain planet” from Polish writer Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 science fiction novel, Solaris, which they consider an allegorical parallel to the medium of painting as an unstable and open-ended process for communication. Ultimately, the artists sought to question authorship and challenge the idea of the singular artist as the original genius by combining their painting styles to create a third entity devoid of gender.

The Explanation Replaced One Enigma by Another embodies the amalgamation of Adam Henry’s explorations of cosmic and scientific themes through seriality and color studies coupled with Emily Mae’s Smith’s neo-pop figurative idiom. Adam Henry’s works, typically made from brushed and sprayed polymers on linen, like the present painting, also informed the color palette. Influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Theory of Colors, Henry works strictly within the predetermined parameters of a color palette limited to red, yellow, blue and violet as a means of exploring the psychology of colors and visual perception. On the other hand, Mae Smith contributed her singular ability to imbue inanimate objects with life beyond their literal form by drawing upon the traditions of Symbolism, Surrealism, and Pop art. Their portrayal of the two glasses, precisely the same size and form but differing slightly in color, invite the viewer to look beyond the subject as merely a vessel for drinking, but rather as a presence that interacts with its surroundings of the moon and sun.