What I Have Learnt From Us: Fabien Adele

Samuele Visentin

Samuele Visentin is proud to present WHAT I HAVE LEARNT FROM US - the debut solo-show of French artist Fabien Adele. Comprising 15 works on canvas painted in between 2019 and 2020, the exhibition is presented in a beautiful private Georgian townhouse, where the domestic space becomes the gallery itself.

Fabien Adele’s paintings operate under the influence of Surrealism, focusing on the means of representation of memories and sensitive experiences and how they can translate to a tangible support.

His first approach to art-making took place at a very early age, when he learnt how to draw from his mother as a child. He has been sharpening his painterly skills and his artistic purpose since then, transforming art into a communication medium.

Fabien Adele’s figures appear as statuesque reflections of the environment that surrounds them. They are one with their surroundings, emerging from the ground like living stalagmites, formed from drips of precious and colourful minerals.

However statuesque, their body language reveals an active mental life, as if absorbed in moments of contemplation or reflection but we, as viewers, are not allowed into their inner world: if we are to understand what keeps them absorbed, we have to rely on the whole scenes built around them, where surrealist objects stand out against sun-drenched horizons.

This artistic choice adopted by Fabien Adele might be a way to ask us to emphasise with them. By painting them from the back or preventing a direct confrontation, he asks us to see what they see, to relate to their experience and understand how they feel regardless of who they are.

Fabien Adele is a French artist (b.1993) based in Paris, France. He studied art history and design at Sorbonne University in Paris.