“In March 1975, Bas Jan Ader had an exhibition at the Saman Gallery in Genoa, Italy, but elected not travel there, remaining in Los Angeles to prepare for what would be a fateful transatlantic sail.”
Curated by Javier Hontoria
In March 1975, Bas Jan Ader had an exhibition at the Saman Gallery in Genoa, Italy, but elected not travel there, remaining in Los Angeles to prepare for what would be a fateful transatlantic sail. For the first time in almost forty years, Ader’s work is again the subject of a solo show in Italy with “Tra Due Mondi” (Between Two Worlds), a survey emphasizing the dominant themes with which the Dutch/Californian artist’s work has been understood: romanticism, an attachment to melancholy, the legacy of Mondrian, and falling. There is an inverse relation between the amount of work Ader produced (little) and the attention his art and life have received in the past decade (significant), a ratio that only emphasizes the poignancy of this enigmatic practice.