Stroma Funk, Charlie Adams’s first exhibition with Union Gallery, constitutes an intuitive
artistic response to a certain primordial ooze-like aesthetic, that of a fundamentally ancient
cytoplasm, or the essential liquid substance of plant blood. This material trigger carries the
potent charge of meaning and mystery throughout the exhibition, like a verdant tendril
seeking to find a grip on the slippery surface of science and magic. The connective substrate
of stroma evokes the hidden matrix of plant life, alien in its antiquity, and indivisible with
primordial intelligence. While funk conjures a sense of deep-earth rhythms and pungently
colourful cycles of life and death. Collectively, Stroma Funk pursues the inherent logic of the
organism within the enigmatic framework of art and the supernatural.
The predilection of an artist towards a certain medium is a telling transmitter of creative
intent, and forms a kind of genomic blueprint underpinning each artistic array. Beyond the
literal experience of manipulated matter comes a speculative blossoming, a fecund field of
mystic play, to be enjoyed by the viewer. Let’s consider that the cytoplasm of science, in this
case, is one small ideological shift away from the ectoplasm of Victorian spiritualist
mediums, both claiming to represent evidence of activity beyond the limits of human
sensory verification. It is within these margins of entropy that we can locate Adams
sensibility and then, as is our want, place it within the canon of Western artistic tradition.
What differentiates Adams painterly brushstrokes is the forward-facing trajectory of his
surfaces. The glossy flat, layered, almost holographic imagery combined with the negative
entropy of his sculptural objects collectively redirect scientific knowledge back towards
abstraction, from whence it came. The intelligent visual sensations of Stroma Funk that we
can see, remind us of the intelligent forces that we cannot. The gelatinous chartreuse and
eco-delic colour of Adams pallet not only provide a visual kick you can almost taste, but
seem to harbour vital coded information, at once familiar and elusive, about the works own
composition.
Poetically, the creative process of the contemporary painter has much in common with
organic growth structures. Stroma Funk unfurls with the deliberate procedural approach of
the naturalist, asserting a visual taxonomy whilst allowing for the uncertainty of dreams.
Adams proto-scientific interests belie preternatural undertones commonplace amongst
ecologists and occultists alike. Such tenets recall the infinite innate wisdom of the primeval
flora-sphere, now lost to the reckless pursuit of technological gain.
Hailing from Somerset and recently completing his Masters at the RCA, Adams retains the
core impulse of his rural roots. The off-beat and joyously gelatinous works of Stroma Funk
express a fascination for nature in the hedonistic vein of Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites and the
Guild of St George. In such bucolic Britannic tradition dwells a near spiritual belief in the
power of plant-based opiates, to free the mind of modernist restraints, and to accept
biological mysteries beyond the realm of verbal explanation.