Thursday, March 20, 2025, from 6 to 7:30 pm

An Artist Talk by Kim Adams

Onsite at The Goldfarb Gallery

co-presented with the Department of Visual Arts and Art History

A public artist talk by legendary artist Kim Adams as part of York University’s 2024–25 Sculpture Talk Lecture Series.

Adams is renowned for his assemblage sculptures that utilize readymade and prefabricated elements to explore social structures and the impact of technology and mobility. Through his work he destabilizes scale within one artwork, moving from large installations and sculptures to small intimate portrayals of social interactions. His pieces read as uncanny tableaus from everyday life, often distilling moments that dissect the commonplace divide between work and leisure. Adams is also well recognized for colliding large, prefabricated forms into absurd and dysfunctional objects. For example, Squid Head, 2001, is an assemblage of two rear halves of different van models into one sculpture, undermining the original form’s use value, making visible the aesthetics of the objects we encounter in our daily lives.

With a career spanning over four decades, Adams is based in Toronto and has been featured in numerous books and catalogues. His work is held in major public collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and the Centraal Museum in the Netherlands. Adams has exhibited extensively both in Canada and internationally, including the Skulptur Projekte in Münster, the Sydney Biennial, and The Power Plant. His work, which blends humor, satire, and seriousness, constructs “worlds” as a form of social critique, occupying the unique space between life and art.