Adam Saks

Adam Saks (born 1974 in Copenhagen) is a Danish painter. He lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Adam Saks studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Copenhagen from 1993–1999. In 1996–1997 he studied under Professor Bernd Koberling at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin.

Adam Saks is a painter, draftsman, watercolorist, in short, an astounding inventor of images and besides that, an outstanding protagonist of his generation in Scandinavia. In his paintings figures, plants, symbols or writing appear, only to vanish in amorphous color or unbound surface-ornaments, in the next blink of an eye – just as the becoming and passing away of nature. Yet, compared to the Vanitas of human existence or a baroque memento mori, Adam Saks reveals an encouraging confirmation of live. His pictures are situated in a state of constant transformation, they bundle and unfold an immense swirl of impressions, memories, emotions and moods. A life in color which occasionally loses itself and regains itself at another place as seen in the exhibition Inhaling Darkness Exhaling Galaxies at Kunstverein Reutlingen (Germany 2017)

In 2011 and 2012 Adam Saks devoted himself extensively to examining the relationship between human beings and nature, or the human figure as an integral part of the organic cycle of life. Multiple influences flow together in Adam Saks' paintings and paperworks. He lets himself drift through travel narratives; directly into the horror of plundering, pillaging and colonialism with its solitude and aggression (e.g. the French Foreign Legion); through compendiums of heraldry and emblemata; and out of cheap comics or tattoo magazines – seafarer's or criminal tattoos as traces of human presence.

Adam Saks has created several artist books with Schaefer Grafisk Vaerksted, Copenhagen. Among them Deep Drawings (2004), Raid (2004) and Fill Your Hands (2007) are made in the monochrome technique of direct transfer in a limited edition of 250 copies each. Elephant Island (2009) is a faksimile of a large ink drawing which – like James Joyce's ulyssian stream of consciousness – waves and weaves itself as well as a massive array of motifal flotsam throughout the whole 29,7 × 630 cm long span of the book rawly bound as Japanese paperback.

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